COMMEMORATION 
OF  THE  CENTENARY  OF  THE  BIRTH  OF 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 

FEBRUARY  22,  1819 


UNDER  THE  AUSPICES  OF  THE 

AMERICAN  ACADEMY  OF  ARTS  AND  LETTERS 
HELD  IN  NEW  YORK  FEBRUARY  19-22,  1919 


OF  THE 

DIVERSITY 

OF 


COMMEMORATION 
OF  THE  CENTENARY  OF  THE  BIRTH  OF 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 


From  the  photograph  by  F.  Gutekunst,  Philadelphia,  taken  February  12,  /<$>?. 


COMMEMORATION 
OF  THE  CENTENARY  OF  THE  BIRTH  OF 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 

POET,  SCHOLAR,  DIPLOMAT 

BORN  IN  CAMBRIDGE,  MASS..  FEBRUARY  22,  1819 
DIED  IN  CAMBRIDGE,  AUGUST  12,  1891 


HELD  UNDER  THE  AUSPICES  OF  THE 

AMERICAN  ACADEMY  OF  ARTS  AND  LETTERS 

IN  NEW  YORK,  FEBRUARY  19-22,  1919 


PUBLISHED  FOR  THE  ACADEMY 

NEW  YORK:    CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1919 


COPYRIGHT,  1919,  BY  THE 
AMERICAN  ACADEMY  OF  ARTS  AND  LETTERS 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

PORTRAIT  OF  LOWELL Frontispiece 

PREFATORY  NOTE  AND  LIST  OF  GUESTS        ....      vii 

EVENTS: 

RECEPTION  BY  PRESIDENT  NICHOLAS  MURRAY 
BUTLER,  OF  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY,  AND  MRS. 
BUTLER  3 

DINNER  AT  THE  RITZ-CARLTON  HOTEL       ...         5 

SPEAKERS: 

ELIHU  ROOT 
JOHN  GALSWORTHY 
MAURICE  HUTTON 
BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

REPRESENTATION  OF  "  DEAR  BRUTUS  "  AT  THE 
EMPIRE  THEATRE,  WITH  LETTER  FROM  SIR 
JAMES  M.  BARRIE 29 

LITERARY  EXERCISES,  RITZ-CARLTON  HOTEL  .      .       33 

SPEAKERS  : 

WILLIAM    MILLIGAN    SLOANE 
BARRETT    WENDELL 
ALFRED    NOYES 
STEPHEN    BUTLER    LEACOCK 
EDGAR    LEE    MASTERS 
SAMUEL   MC  CHORD    CROTHERS 
[v] 


SUPPLEMENTARY  EVENTS: 


[  vi] 

PAGE 


REPRESENTATION    OF    "WASHINGTON"     AT    THE 

THEATRE  DU  VIEUX  COLOMBIER     ....       77 

LUNCHEON    BY    THE    PILGRIMS    AT    THE    UNION 

LEAGUE  CLUB 79 

LUNCHEON  BY  THE  NATIONAL  INSTITUTE  OF  ARTS 

AND  LETTERS 81 

ODE  ON  THE  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE 
BIRTH  OF  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  BY 
DUNCAN  CAMPBELL  SCOTT 83 


LIST  OF  MEMBERS  OF  THE  ACADEMY 85 


PREFATORY  NOTE  AND  LIST  OF  GUESTS 

This  Commemoration  was  suggested  by  Mr.  Nicholas 
Murray  Butler  to  his  Fellow-Directors  of  the  Academy,  with 
the  two-fold  object  of  celebrating  the  Centenary  of  Mr. 
Lowell  as  an  American  man  of  letters,  and  of  accentuating 
in  the  public  mind  the  power  and  unity  of  the  literatures  of 
the  English-speaking  peoples.  Many  prominent  authors  and 
statesmen  of  Great  Britain  and  Canada  were  invited  as  guests 
of  the  Academy.  Those  who  accepted  and  were  present  were: 


FROM  GREAT  BRITAIN 

SIR  HENRY  BABINGTON  SMITH,  K.  C.  B. 
Acting  High  Commissioner  to  the  United  States 

JOHN  GALSWORTHY,  ESQ. 

C.  LEWIS  HIND,  ESQ. 

ROBERT  NICHOLS,  ESQ. 

ALFRED  NOYES,  C.  B.  E.,  LITT.  D. 

FROM  THE  DOMINION  OF  CANADA 

JAMES  CAPPON,  F.  R.  S.  C.,  LL.  D. 

PELHAM  EDGAR,  F.  R.  S.  C.,  PH.  D. 

SIR  ROBERT  ALEXANDER  FALCONER,  K.  C.  M.  G.,  LL.  D. 

MAURICE  HUTTON,  LL.  D. 

STEPHEN  BUTLER  LEACOCK,  F.  R.  S.  C.,  PH.  D. 

ARCHIBALD  M'KELLAR  MACMECHAN,  F.  R.  S.  C. 

DUNCAN  CAMPBELL  SCOTT,  F.  R.  S.  C. 

FROM  AUSTRALIA 
HENRY  YULE  BRADDON,  M.  L.  C. 


COMMEMORATION 
OF  THE  CENTENARY  OF  THE  BIRTH  OF 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 


RECEPTION   BY  PRESIDENT  AND  MRS.   BUTLER 

At  their  home,  60  Morningside  Drive 

On  the  evening  of  February  igth  a  reception  was  given  at 
their  home,  60  Morningside  Drive,  by  President  Nicholas 
Murray  Butler,  of  Columbia  University,  and  Mrs.  Butler,  in 
honor  of  the  Academy  and  its  visiting  guests,  to  which 
were  invited  the  members  of  the  National  Institute  of  Arts 
and  Letters,  and  a  large  number  of  representative  men  and 
women  of  New  York. 


DINNER  AT  THE  RITZ-CARLTON  HOTEL 

A  dinner  of  the  Academy  in  honor  of  the  visiting  guests 
was  given  at  the  Ritz-Carlton  Hotel,  Thursday  evening, 
February  20th.  A  portrait  in  oils  of  Mr.  Lowell,  made  from 
life  by  Mrs.  Dora  Wheeler  Keith,  courteously  loaned  by  the 
Harvard  Club,  was  an  interesting  feature  of  the  occasion. 
Hon.  Elihu  Root,  member  of  the  Academy,  presided  and 
opened  his  address  by  offering  the  toasts  that  follow: 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  please  fill  your  glasses,  which  is 
still  permitted,  and  raise  them,  which  is  indicated  by  high 
authority;  I  give  you  the  health  of  the  President  of  the 
United  States ! 

(Drinking  of  the  Toast) 

Mr.  Root :  Ladies  and  gentlemen — the  King ! 
(Drinking  of  the  Toast) 


[si 


MR.  ELIHU  ROOT 

MEMBER    OF    THE    ACADEMY 

Gentlemen  of  the  Academy,  ladies,  our  guests:  When  that 
stout  English  navigator,  Hendrik  Hudson,  sailed  the  Halj 
Moon  into  this  harbor  three  hundred  and  odd  years  ago,  the 
height  of  land  to  the  north  was  inhabited  by  a  League  of 
Nations — Indian  nations,  five  great  powers  of  the  aboriginal 
world,  bound  together  by  mutual  covenants.  By  force  of 
their  organization  they  held  sway  over  all  the  savage  tribes 
from  the  Penobscot  to  the  Mississippi,  from  Carolina  to  the 
Great  Lakes  of  the  Northwest.  Their  union  did  not  depend 
solely  upon  the  binding  force  of  agreements.  Across  the 
lines  of  national  or  tribal  division  ran  the  lines  of  clanship. 
In  each  of  the  five  Nations  the  members  of  the  clan  bearing 
the  totems  of  the  bear,  the  deer,  the  wolf,  the  beaver,  were 
brethren  of  the  members  of  the  same  clan  bearing  the  same 
totem  in  each  of  the  other  nations.  All  the  members  of  the 
clans  were  bound  together  by  the  traditions  of  brotherhood 
and  sympathy  in  the  most  sacred  ideals  of  Indian  faith. 
The  warp  and  woof  of  these  double  ties  of  political  loyalty 
to  the  nation,  and  personal  loyalty  to  brotherhood  in  the  clan 
created  a  fabric  of  so  firm  a  texture,  of  such  quality  of  resis 
tance  against  all  tendencies  toward  disunion  and  dissension 
that  the  League  of  the  Iroquois  seemed  destined  to  become 
the  origin  of  a  new  civilization  until  the  whites  came  with 
superior  numbers  and  applied  science,  and  a  religion  not 
perfect  in  its  restraint. 

The  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Letters  welcomes  the 
brethren  of  its  clan  from  across  the  boundaries  of  Britain  and 
Canada,  in  the  American  Republic,  with  cheerful  confidence 
that  the  ties  of  brotherhood  in  literature,  of  common  tradi 
tions  and  sympathies  and  ideals  may  bind  more  firmly  to 
gether  in  harmony  of  purpose  and  of  action  the  several  na 
tions  whose  sons  we  are. 

[6] 


[  7] 

We  have  come  together  to  celebrate  the  One  Hundredth 
Anniversary  of  the  birth  of  James  Russell  Lowell,  American 
author  of  English  blood,  born  in  Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
February  22,  1819,  a  descendant  of  Percival  Lowell,  who 
came  from  Bristol,  England,  to  Newburyport,  Massachusetts, 
in  the  year  1639,  raised  by  his  pen  to  be  Minister  representing 
the  United  States  in  Great  Britain,  and,  thereafter,  by  natural 
sequence,  representing  the  best  thought  and  feeling  of  Great 
Britain  to  the  people  of  the  United  States,  a  graduate  of 
Harvard,  Doctor  of  Civil  Laws  of  Oxford,  Doctor  of  Laws  of 
Cambridge,  sometime  Rector  of  the  University  of  St.  Andrews, 
sometime  Professor  of  Belles-Lettres  and  lecturer  at  Har 
vard,  a  gentleman  of  breeding  and  manners,  a  democrat  of 
conviction  and  practice,  a  poet  of  noble  thought  and  charm 
of  expression,  an  essayist  of  insight  and  felicity,  humorist, 
wit,  satirist,  a  man  of  courage,  of  vision,  worthy  of  trust, 
kindly,  lovable,  exhibiting  the  best  qualities  of  his  race. 
He  illustrated  in  his  own  person,  his  character,  his  life,  the 
essential  unity  of  the  race.  He  belongs  to  all  of  us.  No  one 
of  us  can  say  to  another,  "We  celebrate  your  Lowell."  We 
all  of  us  are  celebrating  our  Lowell,  and  when  we  honor  him 
we  are  all  honoring  the  great  qualities  of  character  and 
achievement  wrought  out  in  the  long  progress  of  the  genera 
tions  of  the  peoples  from  whom  we  spring.  He  was  not  of 
the  greatest,  with  fame  transcendent  for  all  time,  but  he  had 
his  marked  and  conspicuous  place  in  the  long  succession  of 
men  of  genius  from  Piers  Plowman  and  Chaucer  down  to  the 
last  great  rendezvous  with  death  in  the  battle  lines  of  France 
and  Flanders,  the  seers  through  whom  the  nobility  of  the  race 
found  voice. 

He  saw  his  Country  in  one  of  those  strange  lethargies 
which  come  at  times  to  all  peoples  under  the  septic  poisoning 
of  prosperity.  The  compromise  between  freedom  and  slav 
ery  which  made  the  American  Union  possible  had  endured 
so  long,  and  had  been  followed  by  such  vast  material  success 
that  the  general  vision  of  his  Countrymen  had  become  ob- 


[8] 

scured,  right  and  wrong  had  grown  to  seem  to  them  strangely 
alike,  and,  when  the  vital  question  whether  America  should 
be  slave  or  free  demanded  a  decision,  it  found  a  people  with 
consciences  asleep,  confused  amid  questions  of  expediency, 
halting  upon  timid  counsels.  Then  Lowell  spoke  for  the 
better  nature,  for  the  deep  underlying  nature  of  his  people. 
Now  in  stately  and  noble  verse,  and  now  in  quaint  and  homely 
exaggeration  of  Yankee  dialect,  with  the  power  of  intense  con 
viction,  with  pathos,  and  wit  and  satire,  and  intuitive  under 
standing  of  their  natures,  he  reached  the  hearts  and  minds  of 
his  countrymen;  he  drove  away  the  mists  that  obscured  their 
sight,  he  awakened  the  memories  of  their  past,  their  traditions, 
their  ideals,  their  sense  of  justice,  their  love  of  liberty,  and, 
under  his  influence  more  than  that  of  any  other  save  Lin 
coln  alone,  the  soul  of  America  rose  above  its  timid  material 
ism,  and,  by  sacrifice  and  suffering,  redeemed  America  for 
freedom. 

When  we  come  to  honor  James  Russell  Lowell,  we  do  more 
than  honor  the  man,  we  honor  literature,  the  interpreter 
of  the  Divine  spirit  in  man.  Will  anyone  question  that 
there  is  an  essential  unity  of  spirit  served  by  that  great  com 
pany  of  poets  and  philosophers,  historians  and  essayists  and 
dramatists,  the  seers  and  prophets  from  all  our  lands,  who 
by  written  word  have  destroyed  the  false  by  showing  the 
truth,  and  driven  out  what  was  base  by  revealing  what  was 
noble;  throughout  the  long  struggle  for  ordered  freedom 
wedded  to  justice,  for  truth,  for  liberty  of  thought,  of  re 
ligion,  of  expression  and  of  action — the  hard  struggle  through 
all  the  centuries  from  before  Magna  Carta  until  now  Britain, 
her  ancient  kingdoms,  her  dominions  and  colonies,  and  her 
mighty  offspring  of  the  West,  inspired  by  a  single  conception 
of  public  right  and  personal  liberty,  are  together  the  chief 
hope  and  bulwark  of  the  peace  and  liberty  of  the  world. 
We  honor  that  great  company  when  we  pay  our  tribute  to 
Lowell,  their  brother 

If  anyone  does  question,  let  him  tell  me  how  it  is  that  for 


thousands  of  miles  from  the  place  where  we  now  meet,  south 
to  the  Gulf  and  the  Rio  Grande,  north  to  the  Arctic,  west  to 
the  Pacific,  more  than  a  hundred  million  people,  drawn  from 
all  the  races  upon  earth,  order  their  lives  according  to  the 
course  of  the  common  law  of  England,  base  their  political 
faith  on  the  principles  of  liberty  and  justice  established  against 
unwilling  governments  by  the  Commons  of  England,  and 
embodied  in  the  limitations  of  official  power  in  the  American 
Constitutions;  rear  their  children  upon  the  nursery  rhymes 
whose  origins  are  lost  in  the  mists  of  the  Saxon  Heptarchy; 
form  their  religion  from  the  texts  of  the  English  Bible;  make 
their  Iawrs,  transact  their  business  and  carry  on  their  social 
intercourse  in  the  speech  of  our  Spenser  and  Shakespeare  and 
Milton.  Here  was  power,  the  most  tremendous  formative 
power  the  world  has  seen  since  the  prime  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
It  was  the  power  of  the  unity  of  the  single  spirit  of  the  com 
posite  race,  wrought  out  in  the  speech  and  life  of  humble  folk, 
made  manifest  and  guarded  and  handed  down  from  genera 
tion  to  generation  by  the  Men  of  English  Letters,  whose 
brotherhood  of  common  service  and  common  inspiration  we 
celebrate  this  night. 

All  over  the  world  the  shock  of  universal  war  has  broken 
the  bonds  of  habit.  Old  postulates  are  denied,  old  customs 
abjured,  old  faiths  forgotten.  New  dreams  beckon.  Nations 
tread  unaccustomed  paths  that  may  lead  to  a  millennium,  or 
back  into  barbarism.  From  every  part  the  peoples  call  to 
one  another  for  sympathy  and  guidance  and  help.  Deep 
calls  unto  deep.  The  fateful  question:  "What  ideals  shall 
rule  the  world?"  hangs  in  the  balance. 

We  join  together  for  greater  courage  and  hope  and  power, 
to  the  end  that  the  ideals  we  have  inherited  and  served  may 
endure  and  prevail.  We  rest  in  faith  that 

"The  single  note 

From  that  deep  chord  which  Hampden  smote 
Will  vibrate  to  the  doom." 


I  10  J 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  ask  you  to  join  me  in  a  toast 
to  the  English-speaking  peoples  of  the  world — the  Children  of 
the  Lion ! 

(Drinking  of  the  Toast) 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  if  this  were  an  asylum  for  the 
feeble-minded,  I  should  introduce  the  first  speaker  of  the 
evening  with  appropriate  explanation;  but  it  is  not,  and  I 
present  Mr.  John  Galsworthy. 


MR.  JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

Mr.  Chairman:  I  do  not  think  I  can  even  try  to  express 
my  sense  of  the  honour  done  me,  and  the  embarrassment  I 
feel  standing  here,  innocent  of  the  higher  culture,  and  so 
poor  a  representative  of  my  country's  literature — on  this 
august  occasion. 

We  celebrate  tonight  the  memory  of  a  great  man  of  Let 
ters.  What  strikes  me  most  about  that  glorious  group  of 
New  England  writers — Emerson  and  Longfellow,  Hawthorne, 
Whittier,  Thoreau,  Motley,  Holmes,  and  Lowell — is  a  cer 
tain  measure  and  magnanimity.  They  were  rare  men  and 
fine  writers;  of  a  temper  simple  and  unafraid. 

I  confess  to  thinking  more  of  James  Russell  Lowell  as  a 
critic  and  master  of  prose  than  as  a  poet.  His  single-hearted 
enthusiasm  for  Letters  had  a  glowing  quality  which  made  it  a 
guiding  star  for  the  frail  barque  of  Culture.  His  humour, 
breadth  of  view,  sagacity,  and  the  all-round  character  of  his 
activities  has  hardly  been  equalled  in  your  country.  Not  so 
great  a  thinker  or  poet  as  Emerson,  not  so  creative  as  Haw 
thorne,  so  original  in  philosophy  and  life  as  Thoreau,  so  racy 
and  quaint  as  Holmes,  he  ran  the  gamut  of  those  qualities 
as  none  of  the  others  did;  and  as  critic  and  analyst  of  litera 
ture  surpassed  them  all. 

But  I  cannot  hope  to  add  anything  of  value  to  your  esti 
mate  and  praise  of  Lowell — critic,  humorist,  poet,  editor, 
reformer,  man  of  Letters,  man  of  State  affairs.  I  may  per 
haps  be  permitted,  however,  to  remind  you  of  two  sayings  of 
his:  "I  am  never  lifted  up  to  any  peak  of  vision — but  that, 
when  I  look  down  in  hope  to  see  some  valley  of  the  Beautiful 
Mountains,  I  behold  nothing  but  blackened  ruins;  and  the 
moans  of  the  downtrodden  the  world  over.  .  .  .  Then  it 
seems  as  if  my  heart  would  break  in  pouring  out  one  glorious 

[ii] 


song  that  should  be  the  gospel  of  Reform,  full  of  consolation  and 
strength  to  the  oppressed.  .  .  .  That  way  my  madness  lies." 
That  was  one  side  of  the  youthful  Lowell,  the  generous  righter 
of  wrongs,  the  man.  And  this  other  saying:  "The  English- 
speaking  nations  should  build  a  monument  to  the  misguided 
enthusiasts  of  the  plains  of  Shinar;  for  as  the  mixture  of  many 
bloods  seems  to  have  made  them  the  most  vigorous  of  modern 
races,  so  has  the  mingling  of  divers  speeches  given  them  a 
language  which  is  perhaps  the  noblest  vehicle  of  poetic  thought 
that  ever  existed."  That  was  the  other  side  of  Lowell,  the 
enthusiast  for  Letters,  and  that  the  feeling  he  had  about  our 
language. 

I  am  wondering  indeed,  Mr.  Chairman,  what  those  men 
who  in  the  fourteenth,  fifteenth,  sixteenth  centuries  were 
welding  the  English  language  would  think  if  they  could  visit 
this  hall  tonight,  if  suddenly  we  saw  them  sitting  among  us  in 
their  monkish  dress,  their  homespun,  or  their  bright  armour, 
having  come  from  a  greater  Land  even  than  America — the 
Land  of  the  Far  Shades.  What  expression  should  we  see  on 
the  dim  faces  of  them,  as  they  took  in  the  marvellous  fact 
that  the  instrument  of  speech  they  forged  in  the  cottages, 
courts,  cloisters,  and  castles  of  their  little  misty  island  had 
become  the  living  speech  of  half  the  world,  and  the  second 
tongue  for  all  the  nations  of  the  other  half!  For  even  so  it  is, 
now — this  English  language,  which  they  made  and  Shake 
speare  crowned,  which  you  speak  and  we  speak,  and  men 
speak  under  the  Southern  Cross,  and  unto  the  Arctic  Seas ! 

I  do  not  think,  Mr.  Chairman,  that  you  Americans  and  we 
English  are  any  longer  strikingly  alike  in  physical  type  or 
general  characteristics,  no  more  than  I  think  there  is  much 
resemblance  between  yourselves  and  the  Australians.  Our 
link  is  now  but  community  of  language — and  the  infinity  which 
this  connotes. 

Perfected  language — and  ours  and  yours  had  come  to 
flower  before  white  men  began  to  seek  these  shores — is  so 
much  more  than  a  medium  through  which  to  exchange  ma- 


1 13  J 

terial  commodities;  it  is  cement  of  the  spirit,  mortar  linking 
the  bricks  of  our  thought  into  a  single  structure  of  ideals  and 
laws,  painted  and  carved  with  the  rarities  of  our  fancy,  the 
manifold  forms  of  Beauty  and  Truth.  We  who  speak  Ameri 
can  and  you  who  speak  English  are  conscious  of  a  community 
which  no  differences  can  take  from  us.  Perhaps  the  very 
greatest  result  of  the  grim  years  we  have  just  been  passing 
through  is  the  promotion  of  our  common  tongue  to  the  posi 
tion  of  the  universal  language.  The  importance  of  the 
English-speaking  peoples  is  now  such  that  the  educated  man 
in  every  country  will  perforce,  as  it  were,  acquire  a  knowledge 
of  our  speech.  The  second-language  problem,  in  my  judg 
ment,  has  been  solved.  Numbers,  and  geographical  and 
political  accident  have  decided  a  question  which  I  think  will 
never  seriously  be  reopened,  unless  madness  descends  on  us 
and  we  speakers  of  English  fight  among  ourselves.  That  fate 
I,  at  least,  cannot  see  haunting  the  future. 

Lowell  says  in  one  of  his  earlier  writings:  "We  are  the 
furthest  from  wishing  to  see  what  many  are  so  ardently  pray 
ing  for,  namely,  a  National  Literature;  for  the  same  mighty 
lyre  of  the  human  heart  answers  the  touch  of  the  master  in 
all  ages  and  in  every  clime,  and  any  literature  in  so  far  as  it  is 
national  is  diseased  in  so  much  as  it  appeals  to  some  climatic 
peculiarity  rather  than  to  universal  nature."  That  is  very 
true,  but  good  fortune  has  now  made  of  our  English  speech 
a  medium  of  internationality. 

Henceforth  you  and  we  are  the  inhabitants  and  guardians 
of  a  great  Spirit-City,  to  which  the  whole  world  will  make 
pilgrimage.  They  will  make  that  pilgrimage  primarily  be 
cause  our  City  is  a  market-place.  It  will  be  for  us  to  see 
that  they  who  come  to  trade  remain  to  worship. 

Mr.  Chairman,  what  is  it  we  seek  in  this  motley  of  our 
lives,  to  what  end  do  we  ply  the  multifarious  traffic  of  civilisa 
tion?  Is  it  that  we  may  become  rich  and  satisfy  a  material 
caprice  ever  growing  with  the  opportunity  of  satisfaction? 
Is  it  that  we  may,  of  set  and  conscious  purpose,  always  be 


getting  the  better  of  one  another?  Is  it  even,  that  of  no 
sort  of  conscious  purpose  we  may  pound  the  roads  of  life  at 
top  speed,  and  blindly  use  up  our  little  energies?  I  cannot 
think  so.  Surely,  in  dim  sort  we  are  trying  to  realize  human 
happiness,  trying  to  reach  a  far-off  goal  of  health  and  kind 
liness  and  beauty;  trying  to  live  so  that  those  qualities 
which  make  us  human  beings — the  sense  of  proportion,  the 
feeling  for  beauty,  pity,  and  the  sense  of  humour — should  be 
ever  more  exalted  above  the  habits  and  passions  that  we  share 
with  the  tiger,  the  ostrich,  and  the  ape. 

And  so,  I  would  ask  what  will  become  of  all  our  recon 
struction  in  these  days  if  it  be  informed  and  guided  solely 
by  the  spirit  of  the  market-place?  Do  trade,  material 
prosperity,  and  the  abundance  of  creature  comforts  guarantee 
that  we  advance  towards  our  real  goal?  Material  com 
fort  in  abundance  is  no  bad  thing;  I  confess  to  a  considerable 
regard  for  it.  But  for  true  progress  it  is  but  a  flighty  con 
sort.  I  can  well  see  the  wreckage  from  the  world-storm 
completely  cleared  away,  the  fields  of  life  ploughed  and 
manured,  and  yet  no  wheat  grown  there  which  can  feed  the 
spirit  of  man,  and  help  its  stature!  Lest  we  suffer  such  a 
disillusion  as  that,  what  powers  and  influence  can  we  exert? 
There  is  one,  at  least:  The  proper  and  exalted  use  of  this 
great  and  splendid  instrument,  our  common  language.  In 
a  sophisticated  world  speech  is  action,  words  are  deeds;  we 
cannot  watch  our  winged  words  too  closely.  Let  us  at 
least  make  our  language  the  instrument  of  Truth;  prune  it 
of  lies  and  extravagance,  of  perversions  and  all  the  calculated 
battery  of  partizanship ;  train  ourselves  to  such  sobriety  of 
speech  and  penmanship,  that  we  come  to  be  trusted  at  home 
and  abroad;  so  making  our  language  the  medium  of  honesty 
and  fair-play  that  meanness,  violence,  sentimentality,  arid 
self-seeking  become  strangers  in  our  lands.  Great  and  evil 
is  the  power  of  the  lie,  of  the  violent  saying,  and  of  the  cal 
culated  appeal  to  base  or  dangerous  motive;  let  us,  then, 
make  them  fugitives  among  us,  outcast  from  our  speech ! 


[  15  J 

I  have  often  thought  during  these  past  years  what  an 
ironical  eye  Providence  must  have  been  turning  on  national 
propaganda — on  all  the  disingenuous  breath  which  has  been 
issued  to  order,  and  all  those  miles  of  patriotic  writings  duti 
fully  produced  in  each  country,  to  prove  to  other  countries 
that  they  are  its  inferiors !  A  very  little  wind  will  blow  those 
ephemeral  sheets  into  the  limbo  of  thin  air.  Already  they 
are  decomposing,  soon  they  will  be  dust.  Mr.  Chairman, 
to  my  thinking  there  are  only  two  forms  of  national  propa 
ganda,  two  sorts  of  evidence  of  a  country's  worth,  which  defy 
the  cross-examination  of  Time:  The  first  and  most  important 
is  the  rectitude  and  magnanimity  of  a  country's  conduct;  its 
determination  not  to  take  advantage  of  the  weakness  of  other 
countries,  nor  to  tolerate  tyranny  within  its  own  borders. 
And  the  other  lasting  form  of  propaganda  is  the  work  of  the 
thinker  and  the  artist,  of  men  whose  unbidden,  unfettered 
hearts  are  set  on  the  expression  of  Truth  and  Beauty  as  best 
they  can  perceive  them.  Such  propaganda  the  old  Greeks 
left  behind  them,  to  the  imperishable  glory  of  their  Land. 
By  such  propaganda  Marcus  Aurelius,  Plutarch,  Dante, 
St.  Francis,  Cervantes,  Spinoza,  Montaigne,  Racine,  Chau 
cer,  Shakespeare,  Goethe,  Kant,  Turgenev,  Tolstoi,  Emer 
son,  Lowell — a  thousand  and  one  more,  have  exalted  their 
countries  in  the  sight  of  all,  and  advanced  the  stature  of 
mankind. 

You  may  have  noticed  in  life,  Mr.  Chairman,  that  when 
we  assure  others  of  our  virtue  and  the  extreme  rectitude  of 
our  conduct  we  make  on  them  but  a  sorry  impression.  If 
on  the  other  hand  we  chance  to  perform  some  just  act  or 
kindness,  of  which  they  hear,  or  to  produce  a  beautiful  work 
which  they  can  see,  we  become  exalted  in  their  estimation 
though  we  did  not  seek  to  be.  And  so  it  is  with  countries. 
They  may  proclaim  their  powers  from  the  housetops — they 
will  but  convince  the  wind;  but  let  their  acts  be  just,  their 
temper  humane,  the  speech  and  writings  of  their  peoples 
sober,  the  work  of  their  thinkers  and  their  artists  true  and 


[  16  ] 

beautiful — and  those  countries   shall  be  sought    after    and 
esteemed. 

We,  who  possess  in  common  the  English  language — "best 
result  of  the  confusion  of  tongues"  Lowell  called  it — that 
most  superb  instrument  for  the  making  of  word-music,  the 
telling  of  the  truth,  and  the  expression  of  the  imagination, 
may  well  remember  this:  that,  in  the  use  we  make  of  it,  in 
the  breadth,  justice,  and  humanity  of  our  thoughts,  the 
vigour,  restraint,  clarity,  and  beauty  of  the  setting  we  give 
to  them,  we  have  the  greatest  chance  to  make  our  countries 
lovely  and  beloved,  to  further  the  happiness  of  mankind,  and 
to  keep  immortal  the  priceless  comradeship  between  us. 


PROFESSOR  MAURICE  HUTTON 

Mr.  Root,  members  of  the  Academy,  and  guests :  I  have  the 
great  honor  this  evening  to  represent  Canada  at  this  meeting 
in  honor  of  Lowell,  and  I  will  begin,  therefore,  by  quoting 
Lowell  and  one  other  poet.  Canada,  after  four  and  a  half 
anxious  years  of  war,  greets  today  her  allies,  the  United 
States  and  Great  Britain, — like  Homer's  Andromache, 
" smiling  through  her  tears,"  or,  in  the  language  of  Lowell 
about  Huldah, 

"  A  kind  o*  smily  round  the  lips, 
And  teary  round  the  lashes." 

It  is  impossible  to  be  present  at  a  gathering  of  this  sort 
without  a  certain  sense  of  contradiction.  We  here,  I  take  it, 
recognize,  as  the  previous  speakers  have  said,  that  Great 
Britain,  Canada  and  the  United  States  are  so  absolutely  one 
in  all  their  interests  that  to  say  so  is  not  a  truth  but  a  truism. 
It  is  but  to  say  what  Lowell  thought  and  it  is  but  to  say 
what  was  thought  by  that  friend  of  Lowell,  that  other  poet, 
the  poet  who  Lowell  said  was  in  some  respects  the  poet  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century,  the  poet  of  Oxford,  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough.  It  is  seventy  years  ago  since  Clough  proposed  that, 
which  still  remains  on  the  whole  a  poet's  dream,  a  transferable 
citizenship  common  to  all  Americans,  Canadians  and  British, 
the  sort  of  citizenship  which  Lowell  exercised  when  he  was 
Rector  of  the  British  University  of  St.  Andrews.  And  yet 
there  is  a  certain  sense  of  contradiction,  ladies  and  gentle 
men,  because,  when  we  who  feel  this  unity  leave  our  univer 
sities  and  our  academic  banquets  and  go  out  into  the  cold 
street  and  meet  the  colder  man  in  the  street,  we  are  aware 
at  once  of  a  sudden  fall  in  temperature,  spiritual  as  well  as 
thermometric.  We  recognize  that  the  academic  class  does 
not  in  this  age  represent,  as  much  as  sometimes  it  has  done, 

[17] 


[  i8  ] 

the  governing  class.  And  because  it  is  so,  and  because  we  do 
not  represent  any  longer  the  governing  class  so  entirely, 
therefore,  it  was  that  your  President,  himself  an  ex-president 
of  a  university  and  sharing  the  academic  feeling,  found  it  so 
hard  and  long  a  task  to  bring  the  governing  class  of  this 
country  into  sympathy  with  the  feelings  of  the  academic 
class  and  incidentally  with  the  feelings  of  Canada  and  Great 
Britain.  And,  therefore,  in  Canada,  for  a  time,  we  did  not  quite 
understand  him,  and  we  thought  his  mind  was  still  moving  in 
those  college  halls  where  all  questions  at  issue  are  academic 
questions,  are  really  questions  where  there  is  no  difference 
except  in  opinion,  where  every  man  is  an  honorable  man  and 
a  peace-loving  man  and  a  truth-loving  man,  and  where,  if  one 
can  talk  of  invective  and  attack,  at  any  rate  the  invective  and 
attack  has  always  to  be  interpreted  in  a  Pickwickian  sense, 
where  the  love  is  always  real  and  the  hate  is,  so  to  speak, 
only  Platonic. 

We  thought  that  the  President  was  still  moving  in  that 
enchanted  air,  where  all  controversies  are,  as  they  are  in  col 
lege  halls,  merely  matters  of  misunderstanding  and  mistake, 
born  of  the  brevity  of  life,  of  the  greater  brevity  of  human 
temper  and  the  eternal  ambiguities  of  language.  And  so 
we  thought  that  he  was  feeling  as  often  he  must  have  felt  in 
his  college  halls;  that  all  tempests,  even  the  tempests  across 
the  sea,  were  only  tempests  in  a  teapot;  were  only  cases  of 
pot  and  kettle,  to  put  it  more  coarsely.  For,  after  all,  pot 
and  kettle,  of  course,  do  affect  vitally  the  qualities  of  tea, 
and  are,  one  or  the  other  of  them,  responsible  for  the  spoiling 
of  the  contents  of  the  teacup;  and,  besides,  of  course,  his 
torically,  tea  has  always  been  a  question  at  issue  between 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States,  and  a  teacup  is  really, 
therefore,  the  historical  symbol  of  our  differences.  So  we 
thought  he  was  still  feeling  that  the  mighty  cataclysm  of  Eur 
ope  was  only  another  case  of  academic  teacup  tempest,  an 
other  case  of  academic  pot  and  kettle  controversy.  We  did 
not  adequately  realize  that,  like  Lincoln,  he  was  patiently 


I  19  J 

playing  for  time,  in  order  to  bring  the  governing  classes  of  his 
country  round  to  his  own  point  of  view. 

Our  three  nations,  when  they  do  not  absolutely  agree,  are 
always  mediating  one  with  another.  Great  Britain  medi 
ates  between  Canada  and  the  United  States,  and  not  always 
to  Canada's  immediate  satisfaction,  when  we  lose,  through 
Great  Britain's  mediation,  "quelques  arpents  de  neige"  and 
certain  stretches  and  leagues  of  salt  water  in  Alaska  and  the 
Yukon.  And  Canada  is  always  mediating  between  the 
United  States  and  Great  Britain,  when,  out  of  her  abounding 
sympathy  with  American  ways  of  thought,  she  interprets  your 
thoughts  to  the  statesmen  of  the  old  mother  country.  And 
the  United  States  is  always  mediating  between  Canada  and 
Great  Britain,  albeit  unconsciously,  unintentionally,  involun 
tarily,  when,  by  your  very  existence  and  your  portentous 
strength,  you  suggest  to  Canadian  statesmen  that  they  would 
better  come  to  terms  with  British  statesmen  and  with  British 
prejudices,  even  while  they  are,  it  may  be,  "in  the  way/' 
lest  a  worse  thing  befall  them. 

We  are  no  longer  able  to  feel  that  the  academic  class  is 
governing,  but  perhaps  we  could  be  a  little  nearer  to  making 
governments,  if  we  were  a  little  more  vocal.  It  really  is  in 
credible,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  that  there  is  not  even  in 
Germany  somewhere  some  small  class  of  decent  homely 
people,  like  ourselves,  and  agreeing  in  our  point  of  view.  It 
is  incredible  that  Professors  Forster  and  Nicolai  and  Prince 
Lichtnowsky  and  the  author  of  "J' Accuse"  and  Herr  Fernau 
are  the  only  people  in  Germany  who  sympathize  with  our 
point  of  view.  And  yet  there  was  never  a  word  throughout 
the  long  four  years  of  war  to  show  that  that  class  exerted 
itself  at  all,  took  any  steps  at  all  to  make  itself  felt  upon  the 
action  and  the  ideas  of  the  man  in  the  street  and  the  military 
class  and  the  governing  class.  It  seems  as  if  it  was  an  inexor 
able  law  of  nature  that  academic  people  should  have  the  de 
fects  of  their  qualities,  and  should  be  beyond  measure  timid, 
beyond  reason  indolent,  academic,  "argoi"  as  the  Greeks 


I    20   J 

called  it,  even  as  our  spiritual  forefathers  in  Athens  them 
selves  were  "argoi"  and  academic.  And  that  is  where  the 
man  we  are  celebrating  can  teach  us  some  lessons. 

There  were  two  things  remarkable  in  Lowell.  Though 
he  belonged  to  the  academic  class  and  was  a  professor  in  a 
university,  he  tried  always  to  reach  the  governing  class,  he 
tried  always  to  be  "  understanded  of  the  people."  And 
there  is  another  thing  about  him,  more  piquant,  more  inter 
esting,  more  curious.  Though  he  was  wit  and  humorist,  wit 
and  humorist  of  first-rate  excellence,  he  did  not,  like  other 
wits  and  humorists,  ridicule  reformers  and  idealists,  but, 
as  your  Chairman  has  told  you  and  as  Mr.  Galsworthy 
has  told  you,  he  devoted  his  great  resources  of  humor  and  of 
wit  to  the  cause  of  reform  and  idealism;  and,  if  not  alone, 
almost  alone  among  wits  and  humorists,  he  fought  those 
forces  of  conservatism  which  have  generally,  for  reasons  not 
very  obscure,  included  the  humorist's  irony  and  the  satirist's 
wit. 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  you  will  excuse  me  a  reference  to 
a  very  ancient  authority.  I  spend  my  life  with  him  and  I 
can  only  speak  out  of  the  fullness  of  my  heart.  Plato  has 
often  photographed  by  casual  anticipation  the  smaller  and 
quainter  ironies  of  our  civilisation  and  Plato  has  an  obiter 
dictum  of  this  nature.  Talking  of  a  question  which  interests 
half,  at  least,  of  my  audience,  talking  of  the  emancipation  of 
women,  of  the  opening  to  women  of  much  greater  opportunities 
of  public  usefulness  and  public  service,  he  makes  Socrates  say 
to  Glaucon  something  of  this  kind:  "My  superlative  friend," 
says  Socrates,  "my  superlative  friend,  let  us  ask  these  wits 
and  humorists  not  to  take  today  their  usual  line,  not  to 
ridicule  and  make  fun  of  all  this  novel  feminism  we  are 
discussing.  Let  us  ask  them  not  to  make  jokes  forever  about 
the  ladies  who  wear  uniforms  and  ride  horseback "-  —as  who 
should  say,  "drive  motor  cars  and  ride  bicycles;" — "of 
course,  they  are  very  funny,  passing  funny,  but  so  were  our 
naked  races  very  funny  even  to  us  some  years  ago,  though 


[21    ] 

now  we  are  familiar  with  them;  and  those  naked  races  are 
still  a  scandal  to  all  the  barbarians  "  (and  so  they  are  still 
indeed  today,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  in  spite  of  Plato).  "Let 
us  ask  them  not  to  make  fun  of  these  novelties  and  of  these 
new  women,  but  to  learn  to  believe  and  feel  the  truth  that 
nothing  is  really  ridiculous  which  is  useful." 

Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  there  you  see  is  the  doctrine, 
ancient,  simple,  true,  that  wits  and  humorists  are  generally 
people  of  little  faith,  obsessed  with  usage  and  convention, 
who,  when  they  look  abroad  for  targets  for  their  ridicule  of 
the  incongruous,  choose,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  for  such 
targets  only  the  crude  faith  of  the  reformer,  the  zeal  without 
discretion  of  the  idealist.  The  humorist  does  not  take  himself 
seriously;  he  has  a  right  then  not  to  take  other  men  seriously; 
and  how  can  he  take  seriously  those  most  serious  moods  of 
the  mind,  which  are  called  Faith  and  Idealism?  If,  for  ex 
ample,  he  took  conscience  very  seriously,  the  first  result  would 
be — as  we  have  all  seen  with  our  humorous  friends  when  they 
"get  religion " —an  immediate  falling  off  of  wit  and  humor; 
these  would  decrease  as  the  other  increased.  It  happened 
conspicuously  to  that  great  humorist  Lewis  Carroll,  when  he 
grew  older  and  more  sober  and  more  serious :  he  exchanged  the 
life-giving  nonsense  of  "Alice"  for  the  painful  moralizings  of 
"Sylvie  and  Bruno." 

But  if  the  wit  and  humor  in  a  man  do  not  decrease,  ah ! 
then  they  increase,  and  at  the  expense  of  Faith;  Plato  recog 
nized  this,  that  when  a  wit  and  humorist  indulges  this  spirit 
constantly,  when  he  launches  his  shafts  of  ridicule  only  at 
the  foibles  of  faith,  only  at  the  reformers,  when  his  ridicule 
and  wit  and  satire  are  not  guarded  and  suppressed  by  his 
faith,  by  his  feelings  or  his  conscience,  or  some  other  force  of 
that  kind,  then  such  wit  and  ridicule  will  be  ever  increasing, 
and  he  will  be  ever  turning  with  greater  disgust  from  the  flaws 
and  follies  of  reformers,  and  ever  with  a  keener  gusto  he  will 
launch  his  shafts  at  demagogism,  at  hysteria,  at  sciolism,  at 
all  the  grotesque  fancy-dress  in  which  faith  and  idealism  are 


[22] 

apt  to  masquerade.  And  after  that  it  is  but  a  step  to  a  war 
fare  against  all  enthusiasm;  that  dubious  quality,  that  de 
batable  land,  a  reproach  to  our  eighteenth  century  ancestors, 
a  condition  of  all  virtue  to  the  nineteenth  century — en 
thusiasm.  The  wit  and  humorist,  the  satirist  and  cynic,  seem 
at  last  to  have  little  definite  to  say  except  (after  Talleyrand) 
"surtout  point  de  zele."  This  is  the  temperament  broadly  of 
the  humorist  from  Aristophanes  down  to  Hookham  Frere, 
his  translator,  down  to  Gibbon  and  Canning,  down  to  the 
Saturday  Reviewers;  I  think  there  was  a  touch  of  it  in  Haw 
thorne.  But  it  was  not  the  way  of  Lowell,  as  two  of  the 
speakers  have  reminded  you.  He  devotes  his  talents,  and 
his  wit  and  humor,  and  his  Biglow  Papers,  to  the  defense  of 
the  reformers  and  the  idealists.  Well,  is  there  anybody  like 
him? 

In  a  gathering  like  this,  I  feel  inclined  to  say  that  the  very 
Princess  of  Humor,  Miss  Austen,  perhaps  seems  at  times  to 
share  this  point  of  view,  because  she  aimed  all  her  wit  and 
humor  and  satire  at  the  conventionalists  and  conservatives; 
but  perhaps  she  was,  after  all,  no  exception  to  the  rule; 
because,  after  all,  she  knew  nobody  except  conventionalists 
and  conservatives;  she  never  had  a  chance  to  meet  radicals 
and  idealists;  and  so  she  aimed  her  shafts  only  at  the  people 
she  knew;  and  perhaps  therefore  was  no  real  exception.  I 
think  of  no  other  exception,  unless  it  be  Dickens,  and,  after 
all,  he  did  not  take  types  of  character  nor  classes  for  his  sub 
jects.  He  rather  sought  to  paint  individual  portraits  and  to 
caricature  individuals.  And  so  he  hardly  comes  under  the 
class  of  exceptions. 

To  return  again  to  this  question  of  the  unity  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  or  English-speaking  races.  What  hope  have  we  that 
this  unity  will  be  persistent  and  permanent?  I  suppose  the 
same  hope  which  was  realized  by  Hellenism.  Reference  has 
already  been  made  by  the  last  speaker  to  Hellenism.  The 
Greeks  were  not  a  conquering  race.  With  a  diminishing  birth 
rate,  with  high  standards  of  comfort,  with  a  very  pacifist 


[23    ] 

people,  what  sign  had  they  of  prevailing?  And  yet  they  pre 
vailed,  because  as  their  pacifist  essayist  said,  "Hellenism  be 
came  not  a  sign  of  race  at  all,  it  became  a  sign  only  of  a  cer 
tain  mind  and  atmosphere;  it  was  no  longer  unity  of  race, 
it  was  unity  of  thought  and  of  mind."  And  is  not  the  same 
our  hope?  Do  we  not  hope  that,  as  Greece  made  Greeks  of 
people  who  had  no  Greek  in  their  blood,  so  our  civilization  is 
able  to  take  into  itself  men  who  have  nothing  of  Anglo-Saxon 
blood  in  them?  Is  it  not  so?  Was  not  your  President 
Roosevelt,  for  all  his  Dutch  origin,  as  conspicuous  a  member 
of  the  English-speaking  race  as  any  man  on  the  face  of  this 
earth?  And  Generals  Botha  and  Smuts  are  the  same.  And, 
if  these  illustrations  are  rather  absurd, — because,  in  any  case, 
of  course,  the  Dutch  are  our  first  cousins, — I  will  give  you  an 
other.  Was  not  the  man  whose  body  lies  in  state  at  Ottawa, 
prepared  this  evening  for  his  funeral,  was  not  Sir  Wilfrid 
Laurier,  English-speaking  in  mind,  though  the  English  word 
upon  his  lips  was  often  French,  more  than  English,  in  its 
accent  or  lack  of  accent?  I  think  he  was.  And  so  with  the 
great  Burke,  the  greatest  of  all  men  sent  to  the  British  Parlia 
ment  at  Westminster,  the  greatest  of  all  British  publicists, 
with  the  possible  exception  of  Bacon, — was  not  the  great  Burke 
also  ultimately  English-speaking  in  mind  as  well  as  tongue? 
Did  not  that  slow-moving,  temperate  Anglo-Saxon  tempera 
ment  sober  the  tempests  of  his  Celtic  moodiness,  and  "the 
multitudinous  seas"  of  his  Irishry  "incarnadine,  making  the 
green  one  red"? 

Mr.  Chairman,  it  appears  to  me  essential  to  the  peace  of 
the  world  and  to  the  permanence  of  the  only  League  of  Na 
tions  of  which  we  are  already  sure,  of  the  only  League  of 
Nations,  which  is  already  something  more  than  your  Presi 
dent's  dream,  that  Anglo-Saxon  unity  should  continue;  and 
the  link  which  holds  together  the  chains  of  that  Anglo- 
Saxon  unity,  the  link  itself  and  the  substance  of  the  chains 
which  the  link  unites,  are  just  the  common  national  inheri 
tance  of  humor  and  good  humor,  of  justice  and  kindliness. 


MR.   BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

MEMBER    OF    THE    ACADEMY 

It  was  with  pleasure  that  I  accepted  the  invitation  to  say 
a  few  words  this  evening,  because  it  gives  me  occasion  to  pay 
a  debt  of  gratitude.  Fifty  years  ago,  when  I  was  an  under 
graduate  at  college,  there  fell  into  my  hands  by  good  fortune 
two  volumes  the  influence  of  which  abides  with  me  yet.  They 
were  the  "Essays  in  Criticism"  of  Matthew  Arnold  and 
"Among  My  Books"  of  James  Russell  Lowell.  They  re 
vealed  to  me  what  criticism  might  be — a  torch  to  illumine  the 
pleasant  path  that  leads  to  literature. 

Arnold's  essays  were  logical  in  structure,  enlightening 
in  critical  theory  and  stimulating  in  their  application  of  the 
canons  of  art;  and  with  advancing  years  I  hold  them  in  ever 
higher  esteem.  But  I  was  more  immediately  attracted  to 
Lowell;  and  I  delighted  in  the  sanity  of  his  judgment,  the 
enthusiasm  of  his  appreciation,  the  individuality  of  his  ex 
pression  and  the  coruscating  brilliance  of  his  wit.  I  enjoyed 
the  brisk  liveliness  of  his  "Fable  for  Critics"  and  the  pun 
gency  of  the  "Biglow  Papers;"  and  I  came  in  time  to  a  richer 
understanding  of  his  loftier  lyrics  and  more  especially  his 
noble  Commemoration  odes,  with  their  burning  patriotism 
and  their  unforgetable  characterization  of  Washington  and 
Lincoln,  in  which  we  find  the  imagination  and  the  elevation, 
the  dignity  and  the  certainty  of  a  Greek  inscription. 

Less  than  a  score  of  years  later,  when  Lowell  had  become 
our  minister  to  Great  Britain,  I  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing 
him  speak  and  of  having  speech  with  him;  and  thereafter  I 
had  as  high  an  opinion  of  the  man  as  I  had  earlier  had  of  the 
critic  and  the  poet.  He  was  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar,  in  the 
good  old  phrase;  but  above  all  else  he  was  a  man,  standing  on 
his  own  feet,  doing  his  own  thinking,  and  ready  always  to 
bear  his  full  share  of  the  burden  of  life.  He  was  a  man  who 
had  become  a  citizen  of  the  world  without  ceasing  to  be  an 

[24] 


American  of  the  strictest  sect.  He  was  a  true  cosmopolitan, 
because  in  Colonel  Higginson's  apt  phrase,  "he  was  at  home 
— even  in  his  own  country." 

He  was  healthy  and  robust,  full-blooded  and  red-blooded, 
with  no  trace  of  dyspepsia  and  no  taint  of  anemia.  His 
genius  was  not  a  thing  apart,  "a  pillared  hermit  of  the  brain" 
— to  quote  from  his  tribute  to  Agassiz.  He  boasted  that  he 
was  a  bookman;  and — to  borrow  a  figure  from  Dr.  Holmes, 
he  had  "the  easy  feeling  among  books  that  a  stable-boy  has 
among  horses."  He  could  toil  manfully,  as  a  scholar  must, 
for  ten  hours  at  a  stretch  and  for  weeks  at  a  time;  but  he 
never  allowed  the  dust  of  pedantry  to  stifle  him.  His  love  for 
nature,  equal  to  his  love  for  literature,  kept  him  breathing  the 
pure  air  of  all  outdoors. 

It  is  a  noteworthy  coincidence  that  two  of  our  foremost  men 
of  letters  have  been  born  on  days  memorable  in  our  history. 
Hawthorne,  in  many  aspects  the  most  peculiarly  American 
of  our  story-tellers,  was  born  on  the  Fourth  of  July;  and  Low 
ell,  with  whom  patriotism  was  a  passion,  was  born  on  February 
twenty-second — a  fit  birthday  for  one  who,  as  our  representa 
tive  to  Great  Britain,  was  to  do  all  that  in  him  lay  to  empha 
size,  as  we  are  emphasizing  to-night,  the  essential  unity  of  all 
the  English-speaking  peoples. 

In  England  men  of  letters  have  on  occasion  been  called  to 
the  service  of  the  state — Chaucer  and  Milton  and  Addison. 
Here  in  the  United  States  we  have  followed  the  example 
of  the  Italian  Republics,  who  sent  Dante  and  Petrarch  and 
Ariosto  on  missions  of  importance.  Franklin  was  our  first 
envoy  to  France;  and  later  Irving  was  sent  to  Spain,  Bancroft 
to  Germany,  and  Motley  to  Austria.  More  recently  three 
members  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Letters  have 
represented  us  in  foreign  parts — Thomas  Nelson  Page  in 
Italy,  Henry  van  Dyke  in  Holland  and  Brand  Whitlock  in 
Belgium.  Thackeray  called  Irving  "the  first  ambassador 
that  the  New  World  of  letters  sent  to  the  Old;"  and  Irving 
humorously  accounted  for  the  cordiality  of  his  reception  in 


[    26    ] 

England  as  due  in  part  to  the  surprise  of  the  British  at  seeing 
an  American  with  a  quill  in  his  hand  and  not  in  his  hair. 

From  Franklin's  day  to  the  present,  the  men  of  letters 
whom  we  have  sent  abroad  have  held  it  to  be  their  foremost 
duty  to  make  friends  for  their  country  in  the  land  to  which 
they  were  accredited,  to  remove  all  sources  of  misunder 
standing,  to  do  all  in  their  power  to  further  peace  and  good 
will.  This  was  Lowell's  aim,  when  he  was  transferred  from 
Madrid  to  London.  There  was  a  pleasant  piquancy  in  our 
sending  to  the  British,  the  bard  who  rimed  the  stinging  stanzas 
of  "Jonathan  to  John;"  but  the  choice  was  wise,  if  only  be 
cause  the  British  have  ever  a  higher  regard  for  a  man  wrho  has 
stood  up  to  them  squarely.  Lowell's  Americanism  was  un 
compromising,  yet  he  never  felt  himself  an  alien  in  the  little 
"isle  set  in  the  silver  sea."  Perhaps  it  was  because  he  held 
himself  to  be  a  direct  descendant  of  the  Elizabethans  that  he 
was  able  to  make  himself  so  easily  at  home  among  the  Vic 
torians.  He  had  good  humor  as  well  as  humor;  and  his 
smile  irradiated  friendliness. 

AH  the  years  Lowell  was  in  England  he  kept  the  flag  flying 
at  the  masthead,  altho  he  frequently  dipped  his  colors  in  the 
courtesy  of  a  salute.  The  late  Colonel  Eustace  Balfour,  a 
son-in-law  of  the  Duke  of  Argyle,  told  me  that  the  family 
were  always  glad  when  Lowell  visited  Inverary,  but  that  they 
had  then  to  keep  a  guard  on  their  tongues,  lest  an  innocent 
allusion  to  America  might  abraid  Lowell's  susceptibility. 
He  took  the  same  stalwart  attitude  in  all  his  many  speeches, 
in  his  charming  talks  at  the  dinner-table  as  well  as  in  his  more 
deeply  meditated  addresses.  At  Birmingham  he  declared 
the  virtues  of  Democracy,  leaving  the  discussion  of  its  vices 
until  he  returned  home  and  told  us  the  duty  of  the  Independent 
in  Politics. 

At  a  dinner  given  thirty  years  ago  by  the  Incorporated 
Society  of  Authors,  of  which  Tennyson  was  President,  to 
Lowell  and  to  the  other  American  men  of  letters  who  chanced 
to  be  in  London  that  summer,  in  recognition  of  our  efforts  in 


[27] 

behalf  of  international  copyright,  he  made  one  of  the  happiest 
of  his  speeches,  as  full  of  good  will  as  it  was  of  "good  things." 
I  recall  the  smile  with  which  he  said  that  he  had  been  told 
often  enough  that  we  Americans  were  inclined  to  see  only  our 
side  of  any  question  and  that  we  were  apt  to  think  we  were 
always  in  the  right.  Then  he  added:  "This  certainly  con 
duces  to  peace  of  mind  and  imperturbability  of  judgment, 
whatever  other  merits  it  may  have.  I  am  sure  I  do  not  know 
where  we  got  it.  Do  you?" 

And  at  an  earlier  speech  at  Emmanuel  College,  the  alma 
mater  of  John  Harvard,  he  spoke  of  the  community  of  blood 
between  America  and  England,  the  community  of  institu 
tions,  and  the  community  of  language — "or  shall  I  say  the 
partial  community  of  language.  At  any  rate  I  must  allow 
that,  considering  how  long  we  have  been  divided  from  you, 
you  speak  English  remarkably  well."  Possibly  one  or  another 
of  his  hearers  might  have  taken  this  as  an  instance  of  a  cer 
tain  condescension  in  a  foreigner,  were  it  not  that  the  British 
never  looked  upon  Lowell  as  a  foreigner.  Nor  did  he  so  re 
gard  himself,  for  he  knew  that  we  are  all  the  children  of  Chau 
cer,  the  subjects  of  King  Shakspere,  the  co-heirs  of  Milton 
and  Dryden.  We  might  be  separated  by  a  thousand  leagues 
of  "the  salt,  unplumbed,  estranging  sea,"  we  might  be  kept 
apart  politically  by  allegiance  to  a  different  fatherland,  but 
we  were  forever  united  in  our  possession  of  a  common  mother- 
tongue. 

It  is  recorded  that  in  the  darkest  days  of  the  Revolutionary 
War,  a  perfervid  patriot  in  the  Continental  Congress,  moved 
that  we  renounce  the  use  of  the  English  language  and  adopt 
one  of  our  own — whereupon  Roger  Sherman  moved  to  amend 
that  we  retain  the  English  language  and  compel  the  British  to 
learn  some  other.  If  either  of  these  impossible  motions  had 
been  carried,  and  if  either  of  them  could  have  been  put  into 
effect,  no  one  would  have  been  more  aggrieved  than  Lowell. 
He  knew  our  noble  tongue  in  its  remoter  historical  recesses; 
and  he  was  always  glad  when  he  could  adduce  evidence  that 


[28] 

the  thread  out  of  which  our  homely  Yankee  speech  is  woven 
had  been  spun  in  Elizabethan  England.  He  knew  that  our 
language  was  not  a  loan  to  us  but  an  inheritance,  and  that  ours 
was  no  younger  brother's  portion  but,  as  the  lawyers  say,  a 
whole  and  undivided  half.  Wherefore  we  must  ever  share 
the  responsibility  for  keeping  English  fit  for  service,  oure  and 
vigorous  and  supple. 

It  was  at  a  dinner  given  to  the  late  Sir  Henry  Irving  be 
fore  the  first  of  his  many  professional  visits  to  the  United 
States,  that  I  heard  Lowell  assert  that  an  after-dinner  speech 
ought  to  contain  an  anecdote,  a  platitude  and  a  quotation. 
I  have  ventured  upon  more  than  one  anecdote;  and  I  dare 
not  hope  that  I  have  escaped  uttering  more  than  one  platitude. 
But  I  have  saved  the  quotation  to  the  end.  I  take  it  from 
the  verses  which  Emerson  wrote  just  sixty  years  ago  to  be 
read  at  the  dinner  given  to  Lowell  on  his  fortieth  birthday: — 

Man  of  marrow,  man  of  mark, 
Virtue  lodged  in  sinew  stark; 
Rich  supplies  and  never  stinted, 
More  behind  at  need  is  hinted. 


Too  well  gifted  to  have  found 
Yet  his  opulence's  bound. 

Logic,  passion,  cordial  zeal, 
Such  as  bard  and  hero  feel, 
— Strength  for  the  hour — 
For  the  day  sufficient  power. 

But  if  another  temper  come, 

If  on  the  sun  shall  creep  a  gloom, 

Then  the  pleasant  bard  will  know 
To  put  his  frolic  mask  behind  him, 
Like  an  old  summer  cloak, 
And  in  sky-born  mail  to  bind  him, 
And  singlehanded  cope  with  Time, 
And  parry — and  deal  the  thunder-stroke. 


REPRESENTATION  OF   "DEAR  BRUTUS" 

FEBRUARY  2isx 

On  the  evening  of  February  2ist  the  Academy  invited 
its  foreign  guests  and  others  to  a  performance  of  "Dear 
Brutus"  at  the  Empire  Theatre,  New  York.  The  occasion 
was  planned  in  honor  of  Mr.  William  Gillette,  member  of  the 
American  Academy,  whose  company  was  producing  the  play, 
and  of  its  author,  Sir  James  M.  Barrie,  member  of  the  British 
Academy,  who  unfortunately  found  himself  unable  to  accept 
the  invitation  to  be  present  as  a  guest  on  this  occasion. 

After  the  presentation  of  the  play,  Mr.  Robert  Underwood 
Johnson  read  the  letter  which  follows,  saying  by  way  of  pref 
ace: 

"This  letter  from  Sir  James  Barrie,  which  I  have  been  asked  to  read, 
has  additional  significance  from  the  fact  that  it  is  written  from  the  Athe 
naeum  Club,  the  intellectual  Gibraltar  of  England.  This  club,  founded  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott  and  some  of  his  contemporaries,  holds  upon  the  list  of  its 
members  virtually  every  distinguished  English  statesman,  divine,  author, 
artist,  and  composer — in  fact,  every  great  Englishman  of  the  last  hundred 
years.  Mr.  Lowell  was  a  member  ex-officio,  and  a  welcome  guest;  and  the 
only  other  Americans  on  its  list  of  regular  members  have  been  three  members 
of  the  Academy,  Mr.  Henry  James,  Mr.  Edwin  A.  Abbey  and  another,  now 
the  only  American  member,  happily  present  here  to-night,  Mr.  Brander 
Matthews.  Mr.  Kipling  once  wrote  me  that  there  was  only  one  other 
honor  to  be  ranked  above  membership  in  the  Athenaeum — to  be  made  a 
peer  of  the  realm  !  It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  Mr.  Barrie,  writing  in 
the  atmosphere  of  England's  greatness,  should  reveal,  through  all  the  play 
fulness  of  his  style,  his  appreciation  of  the  seriousness  of  this  momentous 
hour,  when  his  country  and  ours,  in  common  with  the  rest  of  the  civilized 
world,  are  struggling  for  an  honorable  unity  on  the  lines  of  justice  and 
permanent  peace." 

[29] 


[30] 

Writing  to  the  Chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Arrange 
ments  for  the  Lowell  Commemoration,  Mr.  Barrie  says: 

THE  ATHEN/EUM,  S.  W. 

January  23,  1919. 
DEAR  MR.  MURRAY  BUTLER: 

If  I  were  there  on  the  20th,  to  appear  in  public  for  the  first  and  only 
time,  I  should  be  well  content  if  the  first  and  only  speech  of  my  life  was  on 
the  passionate  desire  of  my  heart — a  closer  friendship  between  America 
and  Britain. 

I  should  probably  make  my  speech  from  Lob's  favorite  position — 
beneath  the  table.  Even  then  the  front  row  only  would  hear  me  (and  the 
others  would  be  the  lucky  ones).  I  would  have  to  say  that  I  could  not 
make  a  speech  to  a  thousand  people,  but  that  if  they  would  join  me — one 
at  a  time,  beneath  the  table,  I  would  make  a  thousand  speeches  to  them. 
I  would  tell  them  that  the  play  of  "Dear  Brutus"  is  an  allegory  about  a 
gentleman  called  John  Bull  who  years  and  years  ago  missed  the  oppor 
tunity  of  his  life  (like  Bacon  when  he  did  not  write  Shakespeare).  The 
Mr.  Dearth  of  the  play  is  really  John  Bull — as  Mr.  Gillette  cunningly  in 
dicates  by  his  figure.  Margaret,  the  Might  Have  Been,  is  really  America. 
The  play  shows  how  on  the  fields  of  France  this  father  and  daughter  get 
a  second  opportunity  of  coming  together;  and  the  nightingale  is  George 
Washington  asking  them  to  do  it  on  his  birthday.  Are  the  two  now  to 
make  it  up  permanently,  or  for  ever  to  drift  apart?  Second  chances  come 
to  few,  and  as  for  a  third  chance,  whoever  heard  of  it?  It  is  now  or  never. 
If  it  is  now,  something  will  have  been  accomplished  greater  than  the  war 
itself:  democracy  will  have  sown  its  noblest  seed,  the  fruit  whereof  America 
was  created  to  give  forth,  that  every  child  born  into  the  world  should 
have  an  equal  chance.  The  future  of  mankind  is  listening  for  our  decision: 
if  we  cannot  rise  to  the  second  chance,  ours  will  be  the  blame,  but  the 
sorrow  will  be  posterity's.  We  shall  have  to  say  sadly  enough : 
"The  fault,  dear  Jonathan,  is  not  in  our  stars 
But  in  ourselves,  that  we  are  underlings." 

J.  M.  BARRIE. 

Mr.  Gillette,  responding  to  a  curtain  call,  spoke  as  follows: 

The  inadequacy  of  anything  that  could  possibly  be  said  to  an  audience 
of  this  character  and  under  circumstances  of  this  description  's  so  hideous 
that  it  borders  on  the  alluring. 

When  I  received  orders  to  come  out  and  say  a  few  words  (I  am  not 
doing  it  of  my  own  free  will — thank  God  !)  or  perhaps  I  had  better  say,  when 
the  constituted  authorities  suggested  that  it  would  be  wise  for  me  to  do 
this,  I  very  well  knew  that  something  extraordinary — of  one  kind  or 


another — must,  if  possible,  be  accomplished.  My  first  idea  was  to  address 
you  in  Latin  rather  than  make  use  of  so  commonplace  a  medium  as  the 
English  language;  but  when  I  asked  Mr.  Augustus  Thomas  what  he 
thought  of  this,  he  said:  "No,  don't  do  that — some  of  them  might  under 
stand  what  you  said  !"  This  appeared  to  be  good  advice,  and  so,  contrary 
to  my  custom  with  Mr.  Thomas,  I  took  it.  In  the  same  way  one  brilliant 
idea  after  another  was  discarded,  until  finally  I  found  myself  with  nothing 
left  to  do  or  to  talk  about  but  the  painfully  obvious. 

But  even  though  it  is  obvious  I  welcome  the  opportunity  of  placing  it 
on  record  in  so  many  words  that  every  one  of  us  who  is  concerned  in  the 
presentation  of  Mr.  Barrie's  delightful  comedy  feels  and  appreciates  the 
reflected  compliment  of  the  Academy's  choice  for  this  evening.  For,  al 
though  that  choice  was  certainly  based  on  the  play  itself,  it  quite  neces 
sarily  drags  us  in  along  with  it,  thus  giving  us  the  chance  to  profit  thereby 
as  best  we  can. 

Indeed,  we  are  in  a  position  to  go  still  further  and  feel  the  reflected 
honor  and  satisfaction  of  being  thus  made  to  play  a  part — a  very  small 
part,  it  is  true,  but  in  this  case  a  very  small  part  is  a  very  great  one — in  the 
centenary  celebration  of  the  birth  of  James  Russell  Lowell. 

At  this  stage  of  the  world's  progress  (as  it  is  called),  when  it  is  becoming 
more  and  more  evident  to  those  who  can  see  that  humanity  is  rapidly  ap 
proaching  the  condition  where  it  will  have  very  little  of  value  left  to  it  but 
its  memories,  to  be  associated — even  to  this  very  modest  degree — with  the 
celebration  of  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  these  memories  is  a  privilege 
indeed. 


LITERARY  EXERCISES  AT  THE   RITZ-CARLTON 

HOTEL 

WILLIAM  M.  SLOANE 

CHANCELLOR  OF  THE  ACADEMY 

The  Centenary  of  Mr.  Lowell's  birth  was  further  cele 
brated  on  the  morning  of  the  220!  of  February  by  literary 
exercises  under  the  chairmanship  of  Professor  William  Milligan 
Sloane,  Chancellor  of  the  Academy,  who  said: 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  guests  of  the  Academy,  and  in 
particular  kinsmen  from  beyond  the  border,  whether  it  be 
beyond  the  seas  or  to  our  North,  you  are  very  welcome  here. 
The  venerated  President  of  the  Academy,  Mr.  William  Dean 
Howells,  will  never  be  venerable,  for,  according  to  the  Greek 
proverb,  "Whom  the  Gods  love  stay  young  until  they  die." 
He  has  sent  a  letter  in  which  he  expresses  the  most  profound 
regret  that  he  cannot  leave  the  South,  where  he  is  at  present, 
far  away,  and  show  his  appreciation  on  this  occasion.  He 
adds  that  on  almost  every  page  written  by  him  he  has  felt 
his  indebtedness  to  Mr.  Lowell,  and  that,  out  of  the  fulness 
of  his  heart,  he  has  written  again  and  again,  so  that,  in  case 
he  could  have  been  here,  with  all  his  modesty  he  says  it,  he 
would  have  had  nothing  to  say  which  he  has  not  already 
said. 

The  collective  person  or  personage  which  we  call  a  nation 
is  supposed  for  the  most  part  to  be  destitute  of  emotion,  and 
indeed  the  business  of  the  state  and  the  nation  is  the  material 
prosperity,  in  the  first  place,  of  those  who  compose  it;  but,  for 
all  that,  it  does  have  emotions.  These  emotions  appear  best 

[33] 


[34] 

in  times  of  strain  and  stress.  The  union  of  hearts  shows  itself 
in  the  hour  of  danger.  Now,  the  common  adventure  of  the 
English-speaking  people  has  brought  us  to  one  of  those  mo 
ments  where  feeling  comes  to  the  surface.  In  the  surge  and 
skimming  has  been  revealed  to  himself  the  rare  gold  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon.  We  have  always  been  one  in  tradition,  wre  have 
been  one  in  common  institutions,  above  all  else  we  have  been 
one  in  our  glorious  common  speech,  but  for  the  first  time  we 
have  been  one,  absolutely  one,  in  action.  Not  but  that  we 
Americans  can  recall  many  instances  where  in  our  early  history 
we  owed  the  perpetuation  of  our  liberties  to  the  intervention  of 
the  mother  country,  not  but  that  often  in  recent  times  there 
have  been  exhibitions  of  the  most  charming  friendship,  but 
the  moment  in  which  we  are  living  marks  the  sublime  con 
summation  of  our  heart's  desire. 

In  every  instant  of  our  history  there  have  been  prophets 
and  seers  who  knew  what  was  in  the  womb  of  time  and  what 
were  the  things  to  come,  but  they  met  with  profound  dis 
couragements.  We  revere  the  memories  of  such  men.  Their 
task  was  hard,  but  their  vision  was  never  dimmed,  and  their 
courage  was  never  daunted.  They  were  pioneers;  they  hewed 
the  path  straight  onward,  but  they  knew  enough  to  look  back 
ward  for  direction  and  guidance  and  inspiration  from  the 
people  who  for  centuries  had  used  the  English  language. 

Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  of  all  historical  sources,  the 
least  tainted  by  pretense  and  the  freest  from  insincerity  are 
literature  and  art,  the  fine  arts.  In  our  Academy  and  In 
stitute  artists  and  writers  have  discovered  in  that  fact  the 
bond  of  their  union,  a  bond  of  the  strongest  kind.  The 
writers,  of  course,  are  not  concerned  alone  with  content,  they 
are  likewise  concerned  with  form,  and  it  is  their  business,  one 
of  the  affairs  of  our  Academy,  one  of  its  chiefest  concerns, 
to  preserve  and  cherish  our  English  speech  as  an  heritage 
beyond  price,  a  tongue  which  is  to  be  kept,  not  only  vigorous 
in  its  history  and  in  its  forms  of  expression,  but  pure  in  what 
it  expresses.  To  men  like-minded  with  ourselves  we  look  for 


[35  ] 

help  and  encouragement,  wherever  such  men  are  throughout 
the  earth.  Because  we  have  noted  the  gallantry  of  your 
writers  and  painters,  your  wielders  of  brush  and  pen,  during 
the  four  years  of  battle  for  all  that  makes  our  lives  worth 
while,  battle  for  what  we  cherish  above  all  things,  because  of 
that,  we  wanted  to  see  you,  to  see  these  friends  of  ours  face 
to  face,  to  look  them  in  the  eye.  They  do  us  good.  They 
have  done  us  good;  because,  long  before  we  entered  the 
fight  of  the  allies,  we  scanned  the  picture  and  the  page  from 
all  British  dominions  to  grasp  the  true  elemental  causes  of 
this  warfare,  and,  as  we  discerned  them,  perhaps  none  too 
quickly,  and  felt  that  the  same  insult  was  being  put  upon  us 
as  had  been  put  upon  them,  and  that  this  was  no  sordid 
quarrel  for  petty  trade  rights,  but  that  it  was  an  enormous 
struggle  for  the  preservation  of  a  type  of  civilization  unknown 
along  the  banks  of  the  Rhine  and  eastward,  our  souls  were 
moved  within  us  and  we  could  no  longer  stand  idle.  The 
sun  of  our  civilization  may  have  been  obscured  by  the  dim 
clouds  of  warfare  and  strife,  but  it  has  not  been,  in  even  the 
slightest  degree,  eclipsed,  and  we  want  our  friends  to  join  with 
us  in  emphasizing  to  themselves,  as  we  do  to  ourselves,  the 
fact  that  this  epoch  is  indeed  the  most  memorable  in  all 
modern  history  because  it  brings  together  these  united  forces 
in  action  and  in  temper  for  the  preservation  of  that  civiliza 
tion  which,  in  the  long  run,  however  dark  the  way  may  appear 
to  some  of  us,  is  going  to  illuminate  the  world. 

This  anniversary — I  want  to  say  this  particularly  to  Mr. 
Noyes,  who  has  claimed  him  for  the  mother  country — this 
anniversary  marks  the  birth  of  that  colonial  American,  who, 
in  the  opinion  of  the  wisest  men  of  his  day  and  since,  really 
saved  the  liberties  of  the  British  nation  against  the  onslaughts 
of  a  German  king.  We  do  not  begrudge  you  such  share  as  you 
had  in  him,  but,  after  all,  George  Washington  and  what  he 
stood  for  saved  the  liberties  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race. 

This  is  also  the  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  an  American 
statesman,  a  man  of  letters,  who  did  the  best  that  in  him  lay 


[36] 

to  promote  amity  and  concord  between  the  America  of  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  and  the  Britain  of  Queen  Victoria.  Mr.  Lowell 
was  a  man  of  far  sight.  Others  will  refer,  as  reference  has 
already  been  made,  to  many  of  his  most  extraordinary  quali 
ties,  but  at  the  outset  I  want  to  call  your  attention  to  one  fact. 
There  is  at  Stratford  a  memorial  fountain,  the  gift  of  an 
American.  In  dedicating  that  fountain,  Mr.  Lowell  brought 
to  the  fore  something  that  I  wish  to  commend  to  this  audience, 
and  to  our  friends  outside  of  it.  He  brought  to  the  fore  that 
which  is  elusive  and  which  we  do  not  always  grasp.  I  have 
been  extremely  interested  in  the  later  French  literature  to 
see  what  emphasis  is  put  upon  the  same  thing.  The  wrorld 
for  the  most  part,  when  it  is  cursed,  is  cursed  by  the  misrule 
of  pure  reason  and  hard  logic;  we  and  ours  have  been  tor 
tured  by  the  arrogant  self-assertion  of  a  rationalistic  culture. 
When  the  world  is  blessed,  it  is  for  the  most  part  blessed  by 
qualities  quite  different.  Since  Mr.  Lowell's  death,  what  have 
we  seen?  That  hard,  cold,  realistic,  logical  philosophy  driven 
home  to  its  very  bitter  conclusion,  and  then  brought  forward 
by  force  upon  an  unwilling  world. 

What  makes  this  world  fit  to  live  in — historians  know  it 
now  as  they  never  knew  it  before — are  the  bonds  of  instinct, 
of  sentiment  and  of  charm.  They  have  been  the  controlling 
forces.  If  there  is  to  be  peace  on  earth,  these  are  the  things 
that  will  lead  to  it  and  establish  it  on  a  firm  foundation.  I 
borrow  an  idea  already  better  expressed  by  Lowell  than  I 
could  hope  to  do.  And  in  borrowing  I  trust  we  may  all 
assimilate  it.  In  order  to  control  insight  and  sympathy  and 
charm,  we  must  keep  our  collective  lives,  historical  and 
spiritual,  up  to  the  level  of  what  our  joint  policy  has  always 
been,  and  lift  our  ideals  much  higher  if  we  can.  We  must 
make  it  the  joy  of  the  English-speaking  company  of  nations 
to  reach  those  things  which  appeal  to  the  very  depths  of  their 
beings. 

That  is  one  of  our  ideals  in  the  Academy.  We  feel  that 
no  greater  contribution  could  be  made  to  the  earthly  millen- 


f.37] 

nfum,  for  which  we  are  waiting  long,  and  we  welcome  you  all 
as  fellow  workers  in  such  a  cause. 

I  have  the  honor  and  the  pleasure  to  introduce  a  speaker 
whose  name  is  known  wherever  men  cherish  such  contribu 
tions  to  literature  as  Americans  have  been  able  to  make.  In 
his  charming  book  of  Sorbonne  lectures  he  has  been  for  long 
years  the  intermediator  between  the  French  people  and  the 
Anglo-Saxon  people,  to  such  an  extent  as  none  other  known 
to  me — Mr.  Barrett  Wendell. 


MR.   BARRETT  WENDELL 

MEMBER    OF    THE    ACADEMY 

When  Robert  Browning  died,  Mr.  Lowell,  then  seventy 
years  old,  was  asked  whether  he  would  send  a  few  memorial 
words  about  him  to  a  literary  magazine  conducted  by  Har 
vard  students.  His  answer  was  characteristic — at  once 
quizzical  and  serious:  nothing  would  have  pleased  him  more 
if  he  had  had  the  strength  and  the  courage  for  the  evidently 
needful  task  of  reading  the  works  of  Browning  through  again, 
to  begin  with.  The  students  who  received  this  word  were 
a  little  perplexed;  but  remembering  Mr.  Lowell  as  a  college 
teacher,  I  could  almost  see  the  urbanely  teasing  look  and  hear 
the  suavely  equivocal  voice  with  which  he  might  have  spoken 
it.  His  gravest  moods,  and  they  were  frequent,  would  not 
have  been  quite  his  if  there  had  not  bubbled  near  the  surface 
of  them  some  sparkle  of  effervescent  fun;  his  most  volatile 
outbreaks  of  wit  or  humor  or  nonsense  often  wafted  you  to  the 
edge  of  the  shadows.  The  Chiron-like  abundance  of  his  inter 
mingled  moustache  and  beard,  which  at  first  looked  like  an 
innocently  fantastic  affectation,  took  another  aspect  when  you 
reflected  that  nothing  could  more  effectually  have  protected 
lips  perhaps  irrepressible  in  their  tendency  to  twitch  or  to 
quiver.  There  was  never  more  conscientious  critic  than  he; 
yet  while  studiously  judging  a  new  edition  of  Shakespere,  he 
was  capable  of  such  an  obiter  dictum  as  this:  "To  every  com 
mentator  who  has  wantonly  tampered  with  the  text,  or  ob 
scured  it  with  his  inky  cloud  of  paraphrase,  we  feel  inclined 
to  apply  the  quadrisyllable  name  of  the  brother  of  Agis,  king  of 
Sparta."  It  was  President  Felton,  they  say,  who  first  dis 
covered  this  obscure  name  to  reveal  itself  as  Eudamidas. 

Whatever  else,  those  who  have  known  even  slightly  such 
a  man,  as  he  lived  and  moved  in  the  New  England  which  bred 
him,  can  hardly  realize  that  he  is  not  actually  alive;  and  that 

[38] 


I  39  J 

in  a  few  years  more  he  must  become  a  thing  no  longer  of  mem 
ory  but  only  of  record.  He  would  have  completed  his  century, 
though,  this  Washington's  birthday.  Not  only  he  but  the 
world  he  knew — Victorian  they  call  it  nowadays — is  a  matter 
of  the  irrevocable  past;  and  we  thinning  few  whose  pious 
gratitude  still  keeps  the  blood  to  give  their  filmy  and  vaporous 
shades  some  little  semblance  of  renewed  solidity  must  do  our 
Odyssean  task  soon.  That  is  why  I  have  tremulously  felt 
imperative  an  unexpected  call  to  say  what  I  can  in  memory 
of  one  whose  presence  can  never  quite  fade  so  long  as  any  who 
knew  it  cast  their  shadows  in  the  sunshine. 

For  them,  or  I  may  better  say  for  us,  his  copious  publica 
tions  can  never  seem  quite  complete.  His  collected  works 
make  an  impressive  series  of  volumes,  prose  and  verse,  poems 
and  essays.  Every  line  in  them  is  sincerely  his  own.  His 
style,  however,  even  though  we  freely  grant  that  throughout 
letters  the  style  is  the  man,  is  not  quite  the  whole  of  him,  nor 
indeed  perhaps  altogether  the  best.  As  you  turn  his  pages, 
you  can  hardly  avoid  the  impression  that  here  is  one  who, 
whenever  he  took  up  his  pen,  could  not  help  feeling  literate. 
In  this  there  is  no  tinge  of  affectation.  AH  his  life,  he  truly 
loved  literature.  His  passion,  however,  was  not  quite  ele 
mentary.  He  was  almost  always  aware  of  it,  somewhat  as  a 
courtly  lover  of  troubadour  times  was  always  aware  of  the 
perfections  of  his  mistress.  To  forget  them,  even  for  a  little 
while,  would  have  been  to  lapse  from  the  happy  duty  of  affec 
tionate  reverence,  not  quite  to  keep  purely  ideal  a  sentiment 
which  any  touch  of  crude  reality  might  begin  to  vulgarize. 
Loyalty  itself  forbade  that  he  should  ever  treat  his  love  un- 
gently;  and  Lowell  was  loyalty  itself.  There  was  a  touch  of 
confession,  accordingly,  or  at  least  of  unwitting  self-revela 
tion,  in  something  which  he  used  now  and  then  to  tell  his  pu 
pils — I  am  not  sure  whether  he  ever  wrote  it  down:  "Ameri 
cans,"  he  would  say,  "have  no  vernacular." 

When  we  stop  to  think,  we  can  hardly  fail  to  see  what  he 
meant.  Language  is  the  material  in  which  men  embody 


[4o  ] 

thought  and  feeling,  or  the  instrument,  if  you  prefer,  which 
makes  every  one  of  us,  each  in  his  little  way,  fleetingly  a 
creator.  There  are  men  and  peoples  so  fortunate  as  habitu 
ally  to  work  with  this  material,  or  to  use  this  instrument,  easily 
and  instinctively;  give  them  thoughts  and  words,  and  they 
will  presently  give  them  fits.  Less  lucky  folks  must  frequently 
be  plagued  by  wondering  whether  their  words  fit  their  thoughts 
quite  so  well  as  they  might,  or  as  they  ought  to.  The  moment 
this  question  arises,  no  matter  how  deft  a  craftsman  you  may 
be,  you  cannot  help  knowing  what  you  are  about.  Once 
aware  of  this,  you  may  give  your  work  many  and  various 
merits;  it  cannot  quite  preserve,  however,  the  charm  of  un 
thinking  ease.  Those  who  possess  a  vernacular  know  what 
they  are  saying,  those  who  lack  one  know  how  they  are  saying 
it — and  such  knowledge  leaves  indefinable  but  unmistakable 
traces.  You  will  find  them  throughout  the  English  of  Ameri 
cans — even  in  their  talk,  or  in  their  correspondence,  and  still 
more  in  the  careful  revision  of  their  literature.  We  may  say 
things  and  write  things  almost  excellently;  we  hardly  ever 
do  so  quite  unconsciously.  And  as  one  turns  the  pages  of 
Lowell's  Works  one  inclines  to  think  that  he  never  did,  from 
beginning  to  end. 

At  the  same  time,  there  can  be  no  sort  of  doubt  that  he  was 
a  consummate  master  of  language.  You  can  feel  this  in  al 
most  every  line  that  he  published;  you  can  feel  it  in  his  familiar 
letters,  however  grave  or  gay,  or  paradoxical ;  you  felt  it  in  his 
talk  as  a  teacher;  and  some  of  those  who  knew  him  best  have 
said  that  you  could  feel  it  most  in  his  intimate  talk  as  a  man — 
particularly  when  almost  anybody  else  might  have  found 
language  to  fail  in  the  matter  of  expletive.  Like  the  master 
he  was,  too,  he  enjoyed  playing  with  the  refractory  thing  which 
he  had  mastered;  he  could  translate  into  current  slang,  and 
seemingly  off-hand,  some  string  of  epithets  from  Rabelais; 
he  could  bring  you  to  pause,  the  next  moment,  by  some  shrewd 
bit  of  wisdom  such  as  has  made  almost  four  centuries  of  readers 
wonder  what  Rabelais  meant;  he  could  be  grave  to  the  point 


[41  ] 

of  solemnity,  and  tender  to  the  verge — if  not  sometimes  over 
the  verge — of  sentimentality.  He  could  play  with  words 
incomparably;  at  a  Phi  Beta  Kappa  dinner,  where  he  hap 
pened  to  touch  on  Virgil,  he  is  said  to  have  declared  that  he 
had  never  opened  the  Bucolics  without  feeling  "Tityre  tu." 
And  in  the  academic  oration  which  he  delivered  on  the  250th 
anniversary  of  the  founding  of  Harvard  College,  he  made  the 
most  unexpected  of  quotations:  "The  founders  of  the  College/' 
he  said,  "believed  with  the  old  poet  that  whipping  was  a  'wild 
benefit  of  nature,'  and  could  they  have  read  Wordsworth's 
exquisite  stanza: 

'One  impulse  from  a  vernal  wood 

Can  teach  us  more  of  man, 
Of  moral  evil  and  of  good, 
Than  all  the  sages  can/ 

they  would  have  struck  out  'vernal'  and  inserted  'birchen* 
in  the  margin."  The  wonder  of  this,  perhaps,  can  never  be 
fully  felt  except  by  those  who  heard  him  read  the  lines;  he 
somehow  managed,  with  no  evident  trick,  to  get  the  full  swish 
of  a  pedagogic  rod  into  the  word  "impulse." 

To  imagine,  however,  that  this  joyous  jugglery  was  a  bit 
final  with  him  would  be  not  to  understand  him.  His  definition 
of  a  university,  in  that  same  oration,  sounds  paradoxical: 
"A  university  is  a  place  where  nothing  useful  is  taught;  but 
a  university  is  possible  only  where  a  man  may  get  his  liveli 
hood  by  digging  Sanskrit  roots."  Really,  however,  he  was 
deeply  and  beautifully  serious.  His  gloss  on  this  text  is  too 
long  to  read  now;  but  here  is  a  memorable  passage  from  it: 
"Let  the  Humanities  be  maintained  undiminished  in  their 
ancient  right.  Leave  in  their  traditional  pre-eminence  those 
arts  that  were  rightly  called  liberal;  those  studies  that  kindle 
the  imagination,  and  through  it  irradiate  the  reason;  those 
studies  that  manumitted  the  modern  mind;  those  in  which 
the  brains  of  finest  temper  have  found  alike  their  stimulus  and 
their  repose,  taught  by  them  that  the  power  of  intellect  is 


[42] 

heightened  in  proportion  as  it  is  made  gracious  by  measure 
and  symmetry/'  His  use  of  the  word  "measure,"  in  just  this 
place,  harks  back  to  Dante;  "misura," — literally  to  be 
translated  as  "measure,"  or  as  "order," — was  in  troubadour 
times  the  technical  term  for  a  virtue  which  Dante  held  essen 
tial  in  life  as  well  as  in  letters;  and  I  remember  how  Mr. 
Lowell  dwelt  in  his  class-room  on  the  lines  where  Dante  tells 
the  shade  of  Jacopo  Rusticucci  what  has  befallen  the  city 
from  which  both  were  exiled — one  for  life,  the  other  for 
eternity: 

"La  gente  nuova  e  i  subiti  guadagni 
Orgoglio  e  dismisura  han  generata, 
Fiorenza,  in  te." 

"The  self-made  people  with  their  ready  wealth 
Pride  and  disdain  of  order  have  begot, 
Florence,  in  thee." 

We  happened  to  be  reading  that  passage  toward  the  end  of 
President  Grant's  administration.  Lowell  at  least  implied 
that  it  was  ominously  applicable  to  the  country  which  he 
loved  with  all  his  heart.  "Dismisura" — lack  of  measure, 
disdain  of  order,  neglect  of  true  values — is  among  the  vilest 
of  evils  and  the  most  insidious.  There  is  no  need  to  remind 
ourselves  that  Lowell  was  all  his  life  an  ardent  reformer;  our 
danger  is  rather  that  we  may  forget  that  he  was  as  eager  to 
preserve  what  is  good  as  to  destroy  what  is  evil.  Nothing 
could  have  been  much  more  remote  from  his  literal  political 
principles  than  the  conception  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire, 
so  passionately  set  forth  by  Dante;  yet  Dante  himself,  whom 
Lowell  cherished  beyond  all  other  poets,  could  not  have  be 
lieved  more  fervently  than  he  that  final  righteousness  must 
give  everything  its  due — that  the  essence  of  damnation  may 
be  found  in  the  words : 

"Che  senza  speme  vivemmo  in  disio;" 
"Hopeless  we  live  in  longing;" 


[43] 

that  the  essence  of  purgation  may  be  found  in  penitent  suffer 
ings, 

"Dove  poter  peccar  non  e  piu  nostro;" 

"Wherein  the  power  to  sin  is  ours  no  more;" 

and  that  the  essence  of  salvation  lies  in  eternally  miraculous 
submission  to  those  marvellous  words  of  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
uThy  will  be  done."  The  will  of  God,  like  the  peace  of  God, 
passeth  all  understanding;  at  least,  however,  we  can  discern 
that,  even  as  revealed  by  the  course  of  earthly  things, — Nature, 
Fate,  whatever  you  choose, — it  inexorably  denies  that  better  is 
the  same  as  worse,  evil  as  good,  chaos  as  order;  and  those  who 
unflinchingly  seek  its  earthly  semblance,  may  come  even  in 
life  to  know  that 

"In  la  Sua  voluntade  e  nostra  pace;" 
"In  His  will  is  our  peace." 

If  I  have  seemed  for  a  little  while  to  stray,  it  is  only  be 
cause  those  three  lines  of  the  Divine  Comedy  have  stayed  with 
me  since  I  first  began  to  feel  their  meaning  in  Mr.  Lowell's 
class-room,  more  than  forty  years  ago.  "Dante,"  he  once 
said,  "will  never  lead  you  wrong."  From  Dante  and  from 
Lowell's  teaching  alike  one  learned  to  believe  that  even  though 
duty  bid  us  condemn  and  extirpate  whatever  is  ignoble,  it 
equally  bids  us  sustain  and  improve  whatever  is  good.  The 
spirit  of  true  reform,  no  matter  what  shape  it  takes,  is  not 
destructive;  the  task  of  true  reformers  is  rather  an  inces 
santly  nobler  reshaping  of  that  which,  still  and  forever  imper 
fect,  is  happily  already  ours. 

Among  the  things  most  surely  ours  must  always  and 
everywhere  be  our  heritage.  That  of  the  Lowells  happens 
to  be  peculiarly  American.  Before  1640,  Percival  Lowell,  an 
elderly  man  of  some  comparative  fortune  and  condition, 
came  from  Somersetshire  to  Newbury,  in  Massachusetts, 
where  he  survived  to  advanced  age.  With  him  came  a  son, 


[  44  J 

about  forty  years  old,  and  a  grandson  of  ten.  The  son  died 
at  the  age  of  fifty-two.  The  grandson  lived  to  marry  three 
times  and  to  beget  nineteen  children,  dying  in  apparently  re 
duced  circumstances.  His  fifteenth  son,  born  in  Boston  in 
1675,  lived  only  until  1711 ;  and  the  fact  that  he  is  not  men 
tioned  in  SewalPs  Diary  implies  that  he  was  inconspicuous. 
If  so,  it  amounts  to  a  personal  distinction;  for  it  has  not  been 
the  case  with  any  of  his  descendants  since  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne.  In  1721  his  son,  John  Lowell,  then  eighteen  years  old, 
took  his  degree  at  Harvard  College,  and  five  years  later  he 
was  ordained  pastor  of  the  First  Church  of  Newburyport, 
where  he  passed  the  rest  of  his  life.  His  son  John,  who  took 
his  degree  in  1760,  became  a  lawyer,  was  active  in  politics, 
removed  to  Boston,  was  appointed  Judge  of  the  United  States 
District  Court  in  Massachusetts  by  Washington,  and  if  John 
Adams's  " midnight  judges"  had  held  their  offices  would  have 
died  Chief  Justice  of  the  Circuit  Court.  He  married  three 
times;  by  each  marriage  he  had  one  son;  a  great-grandson  of 
the  eldest  is  the  present  president  of  Harvard  College;  the 
second  is  remembered  as  the  founder  of  the  factory  system  in 
what  has  long  been  the  city  of  Lowell,  Massachusetts;  the 
third,  Charles,  who  took  his  degree  in  1800,  became  pastor 
of  the  West  Church  in  Boston.  James  Russell  Lowell  was 
.the  youngest  of  this  reverend  gentleman's  six  children.  By 
his  time,  the  condition  of  the  family  was  such  that  when,  in 
1877,  a  Bostonian  who  happened  to  be  in  London  was  asked 
whether  he  knew  Mr.  Lowell,  he  artlessly  answered  "Which?" 
There  were  at  least  five  other  descendants  of  the  first  Judge 
Lowell — one  of  them  himself  on  the  United  States  bench — 
who,  from  a  local  point  of  view,  might  equally  well  have  been 
so  denominated.  And  there  have  been  at  least  as  many  more 
since — including  a  third  Federal  Judge. 

Such  facts  as  these  we  conventionally  hold  trivial.  Duly 
considered,  however,  they  are  important.  It  needs  little  re 
flection  to  perceive  that  nothing  could  more  clearly  define 
what  Lowell  was.  In  the  first  place,  this  family  record  proves 


[45  1 

him  to  have  come  from  a  stock  which  for  two  centuries  has 
displayed  exceptional  power  of  working  hard  and  well  without 
the  stimulus  of  social  adversity — itself,  when  one  stops  to 
think,  an  implicit  evidence  of  weakness.  In  the  second  place, 
though  he  would  now  have  been  a  hundred  years  old,  he  was 
already  in  the  eighth  American  generation.  The  first  two 
were  English-born,  and  born  under  Queen  Elizabeth;  but 
they  deliberately  chose  to  cast  their  lot  in  America,  and  to  die 
here.  The  third,  though  English-born — like  Samuel  Sewall 
himself,  the  most  typical  of  Yankee  diarists — had  only  Ameri 
can  experience.  The  next  four,  three  of  them  graduates  of 
Harvard  College,  knew  life  only  as  life  presents  itself  to  those 
who  have  completely  lost  all  personal  traditions  foreign  to  our 
own  country.  For  better  or  worse,  they  were  wholly  Ameri 
can,  and  nothing  else;  their  relation  with  the  old  world  was 
only  a  matter  of  history — like  that  of  Englishmen  to  the  regions 
inhabited  by  Anglo-Saxon  or  Norman  ancestors  a  thousand  or 
fifteen  hundred  years  ago.  Such  native  quality  is  really  a 
matter  of  human  memory;  nobody  can  ever  be  quite  native 
anywhere,  so  long  as  anybody  remembers  where  else  he  came 
from;  when  a  stock  knows  its  alien  origin  only  by  tradition, 
and  only  then — no  matter  how  staunch  its  loyalty, — it  be 
comes  incontestably  native.  One  traditional  phase  of  Yan 
kee  nativity,  a  certain  pretense  to  disdain  of  other  than  Yan 
kee  conditions,  lurked  in  an  offhand  pleasantry  of  Lowell's 
before  one  of  his  classes.  He  happened  to  touch  on  the  Ger 
man  legend  of  the  Swan  Maidens,  and,  unconsciously  prophet 
ic,  told  how  some  Teutonic  gentlemen,  riding  near  a  pond, 
observed  pretty  girls  bathing  there,  "and  with  the  knightly 
courtesy  of  the  olden  time,  stole  their  clothes." 

In  Lowell,  however,  there  was  dormant  another  than  this 
completely  native  strain.  His  mother's  father,  who  lived 
in  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  was  born  in  Orkney;  and 
so  was  her  maternal  grandfather,  who  held  office  under  the  last 
royal  governor  of  New  Hampshire,  and  left  America  with 
other  loyalists  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  The  wife  of 


[46] 

this  gentleman,  however,  passed  her  last  days  at  Portsmouth; 
her  father  was  among  the  signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence.  She  nevertheless  stayed  as  loyal  to  the  olden  time 
as  her  husband  was;  and  Lowell  liked  to  tell  how  all  her 
life  she  kept  the  Fourth  of  July,  with  closed  blinds,  as  a  day  of 
mourning.  Loyalties,  even  though  extinct,  are  reverend; 
or  what  would  become  of  Walter  Scott?  Through  the  Cutts 
family,  besides,  this  lady  traced  some  manner  of  kinship  with 
that  childless  early  New  Hampshire  worthy,  Francis  Champer- 
nowne,  of  Dartington, — himself  a  kinsman  of  Sir  Humphrey 
Gilbert  and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh.  Lowell,  I  think,  never  al 
luded  to  this;  but  if  he  ever  knew  it  he  can  hardly  have  for 
gotten  it.  Here  was  a  link  of  his  own  with  giant  forefathers 
of  our  Western  world. 

The  Cambridge  house  where  he  was  born,  too,  where  he 
mostly  lived  and  where  he  died  was — and  remains — an  ideal 
nursery  of  tradition.  Built  by  an  eminent  officer  of  the 
Crown,  confiscated  by  the  Revolution,  for  some  years  the 
home  of  Elbridge  Gerry,  who  died  Madison's  Vice-President 
of  the  United  States  well  before  Lowell's  father  bought  it, 
nothing  can  be  more  admirably  New  English.  Its  simplicity, 
and  the  delicacy  of  its  proportions  and  of  its  detail,  mark  it 
as  what  we  now  call  "Colonial"  American.  Except  for 
Georgian  England,  nevertheless,  it  could  no  more  have  existed 
than  the  pediments  and  colonnades  of  Renaissance  architecture 
could  have  come  into  being  except  for  the  temples  of  Greece. 
You  can  hardly  see  it,  and  you  surely  cannot  enter  it,  without 
a  haunting  sense  both  of  how  our  independent  nation  originated 
and  of  the  days  when  America  and  the  Mother  Country  were 
still  at  one.  This  atmosphere,  which  surrounded  him  all  his 
life,  he  not  only  imbibed  but  enriched.  The  books  of  his 
overflowing  library  seemed  to  belong  there  as  nowhere  else. 
Though  nothing  less  than  all  literature  was  his  province,  the 
region  of  literature  most  instantly  his  own  was  English;  and 
the  literature  he  made  has  its  due  place  in  that  of  which  the 
four  great  Masters  are  Chaucer,  and  Spenser,  and  Shakespere 


[47] 

and  Milton — common  possessions  of  all  English-speaking 
mankind.  Loyalty  to  ourselves  even  now  demands,  and  must 
forever  demand,  loyalty  to  them.  His  never  wavered.  He 
was  never  more  himself  than  when  a  student  found  him  one 
evening,  before  his  wood-fire,  his  book-shelves  in  dim  back 
ground,  with  a  big  folio  on  his  knee  from  which  he  presently 
kept  on  reading  aloud.  It  chanced  to  be  open  at  some  pas 
sage  from  the  Apocrypha,  not  itself  supremely  memorable. 
As  Lowell  read  the  words,  though,  they  seemed  supremely  to 
assert  the  supreme  beauty  of  surge  and  cadence  unconsciously 
achieved  by  that  marvellous  generation  of  nameless  masters 
who  gave  us  the  English  Bible.  Some  echo  of  this  appears 
always  to  have  haunted  him.  When  he  wrote  of  Dryden  "I 
have  long  thought  that  he  was  the  last  great  writer  of  ... 
English  prose,"  he  gave  less  than  the  fundamental  reason  for 
his  opinion.  He  was  right  in  saying  that  before  1700  "the  lan 
guage  had  not  yet  been  sophisticated  by  writing  for  the  press" 
and  that  Dryden  "wrote  as  a  gentleman  rather  than  as  an 
author."  A  deeper  secret  still,  however,  of  the  charm  he 
felt  lies  in  the  fact  that  even  though  Dryden  was  almost  the 
first  to  show  what  Gallicized  niceties  could  do  with  English 
prose,  he  was  also  among  the  last  to  preserve  instinctive  sense 
of  that  grandeur  which  pervades  the  prose  rhythm  of  English 
from  the  time  when  it  came  into  existence  until  the  beginning 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century.  The  splendor  of  this  rhythm 
Lowell  could  never  quite  forget.  You  can  hardly  feel  the 
full  quality  of  his  own  style  until  you  understand  that  it 
bears  to  Dryden's,  and  to  that  of  Englishmen  who  wrote 
earlier,  some  such  relation  as  is  borne  by  Virgilian  graces  to 
"the  surge  and  thunder  of  the  Odyssey." 

Now  and  again,  inconspicuous  passages  reveal  more  of  a 
poet's  meaning  than  you  may  find  in  those  which  appear  more 
memorable  and  more  beautiful.  Four  lines  from  Lowell's 
Ode  read  at  Concord  on  the  igth  of  April,  1875, tne  Centenary 
of  the  first  shedding  of  blood  in  the  American  Revolution, 
excellently  summarize  how,  at  the  age  of  fifty-six,  the  tradi- 


[48] 

tions  of  his  heritage  had  made  him  regard  that  fatal  disunion 
of  British  Empire: 

"Here  English  law  and  English  thought 
'Gainst  the  self-will  of  England  fought; 
And  here  were  men  (coequal  with  their  fate) 
Who  did  great  things,  unconscious  they  were  great." 

These  words,  if  I  am  not  all  astray,  set  forth  true  American 
loyalty;  yet  this  loyalty  would  not  be  itself  were  it  not  New 
English  too,  and  as  New  English,  sprung  from  the  .thought 
and  the  law  and  the  literature  ancestral  alike  to  Old  England 
and  to  New. 

By  that  time  he  seemed  a  robust  elderly  man  of  letters 
who  had  virtually  done  his  work  but  might  live  on  for  many 
quiet  years  with  his  college  classes  and  in  his  library,  now  and 
then  writing  poems  and  essays  more  sure  of  admiration  than 
of  perusal.  Though  except  for  occasional  epigrams  in  the 
Biglow  Papers  he  had  never  been  widely  popular,  his  faithful 
ness  to  his  literary  vocation  had  brought  its  reward.  So  far 
as  anything  in  New  England  can  be  regarded  as  classic,  both 
his  poems  and  his  essays  had  won  this  dignity.  He  had  never 
showed  much  narrative  power — the  quality  which  most  in 
stantly  attracts  readers;  but  his  criticism  had  been  cordially 
recognized  abroad,  refreshing  and  reviving  English  interest 
in  the  boundless  treasures  of  English  literature.  Oxford  had 
conferred  on  him  her  D.C.L.,  and  Cambridge  her  LL.D.  One 
carelessly  thought  of  him  as  to  some  extent  an  international 
personage,  forgetting  if  ever  aware  that  until  he  was  well  past 
thirty  years  old  he  had  hardly  strayed  further  from  our  Massa 
chusetts  Cambridge  than  the  Maine  Woods  or  the  City  ol 
Washington.  His  concern  with  public  affairs  had  been  only  as 
a  fearlessly  sincere  critic.  From  his  Anti-Slavery  days  and  his 
Yankee  dialect  rhymes  which  remain  the  most  nearly  endur 
ing  of  American  political  satires  to  his  occasionally  perfervid 
political  essays  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  and  the  North  Amer 
ican  Review  and  to  the  solemn  dignity  of  his  Commemoration 


(49) 

Ode,  he  had  never  hesitated  to  tell  what  he  believed  the  truth 
about  the  course  and  the  tendencies  of  our  United  States  of 
America.  He  had  never  been  called  on,  though,  to  bear 
much  if  any  public  responsibility,  and  his  social  relations, 
both  at  home  and  in  Europe,  extended  little  beyond  the  com 
pany  of  his  fellow-craftsmen  in  the  art  of  letters.  Those  who 
knew  him  could  not  help  liking  him,  partly  for  his  irrepressible 
fun,  always  animating  moods  which  otherwise  might  have  got 
over-serious  or  over-sentimental.  On  the  whole,  however,  it 
sometimes  seemed  rather  a  wonder  that  both  Cambridge,  the 
mother  of  Harvard,  and  Oxford,  the  mother  of  Cambridge,  had 
been  roused  to  recognize  his  achievement  by  robing  him  in 
academic  scarlet.  This  kindly  tribute  of  England  to  the  merit 
of  New  England  appeared  worthily  to  complete  an  honest  and 
honorable  literary  career. 

The  next  year,  his  public  career  began.  At  the  age  of  fifty- 
seven  he  was  sent  as  a  delegate  to  the  convention  which  nomi 
nated  a  Republican  candidate  for  the  presidency.  Though  the 
candidate  chosen  was  other  than  he  would  have  preferred,  he 
loyally  accepted  the  decision  of  the  convention,  and  when, 
after  the  closest  and  perhaps  the  most  perilous  political  con 
test  in  American  history,  President  Hayes  was  inaugurated, 
Lowell  was  before  long  appointed  Minister  to  Spain.  There 
he  remained  for  between  two  and  three  years,  constantly 
confronted  writh  duties  both  professional  and  personal,  both 
responsible  and  social,  for  which  his  fitness  had  never  before 
been  tested,  and  constantly  proving  himself  to  possess  not 
only  adequate  but  exceptional  practical  ability.  For  two 
hundred  years  the  Lowells  have  had  a  way  of  doing  wherever 
they  have  happened  to  be;  and  he  was  not  a  Lowell  for 
nothing.  By  themselves  those  years  in  Spain  would  have  as 
sured  him  a  new  kind  of  eminence,  perhaps  modest  but  un 
questionably  distinct.  They  were  not  suffered  to  stay  by 
themselves.  Just  about  thirty-nine  years  ago — that  is,  just 
about  his  sixty-first  birthday — he  was  transferred  from  the 
comparatively  secondary  Spanish  mission  to  the  office  which 


[50] 

the  circumstances  of  our  history  have  made  and  kept  the  most 
important  in  our  diplomatic  service,  the  mission  to  England. 
In  England,  for  the  next  five  years,  his  position  was  far  more 
conspicuous  than  it  had  ever  been  anywhere  before,  or  than 
it  ever  was  at  home. 

There,  in  full  light,  such  as  gleams  through  that  window, 
above  the  dim  entrance  to  the  Chapter  House  of  Westminster 
Abbey,  which  consecrates  his  memory  at  the  most  holy  shrine 
of  English  and  English-speaking  tradition,  England  and 
America  could  at  last  see  him  as  he  was.  Part  of  what  made 
him  so  was  that,  for  all  the  self-consciousness  inseparable 
from  Yankee  heritage,  he  was  too  wise  to  take  himself  too 
seriously;  for  want  of  habitual  valets,  perhaps,  he  was  no  hero 
in  his  own  mind.  "I  was  listening,"  he  wrote  thirty  years 
ago,  on  the  day  after  a  dinner  in  honor  of  his  seventieth  birth 
day,—  "I  was  listening  to  my  own  praises  for  two  hours  last 
night,  and  have  hardly  got  used  to  the  discovery  of  how  great 
a  man  I  am."  If  he  had  ever  got  used  to  it,  he  could  hardly 
have  been  so  gladly  remembered  as  we  remember  him  now 
wherever  our  language  is  spoken.  He  would  not  have  been 
himself  if  he  had  not  been  saturated  with  the  traditions 
native  to  that  New  England  which  through  most  of  his  life 
time  still  remained  one  of  the  two  most  indelibly  native  regions 
in  our  United  States.  He  could  not  have  been  so  saturated  if 
there  had  not  adhered  to  his  shoulder  a  few  such  chips  as  he 
whittled  when  he  discoursed  "On  a  Certain  Condescension  in 
Foreigners;"  nor  yet  if  the  quintessence  of  our  nativity  had 
not  been  distilled  into  such  lines  as: 


"O  strange  New  World,  that  yit  wast  never  young, 
Whose  youth  from  thee  by  gripin'  need  was  wrung, 
Brown  foundlin'  of  the  woods,  whose  baby-bed 
Was  prowled  roun'  by  the  Injuns'  cracklin'  tread, 
An*  who  grew'st  strong  thru  shifts  an'  wants  an*  pains, 
Nussed  by  stern  men  with  empires  in  their  brains, 
Who  saw  in  vision  their  young  Ishmel  strain 
With  each  hard  hand  a  vassal  ocean's  mane, 


Thou,  skilled  by  Freedom  an'  by  gret  events 

To  pitch  new  States  ez  Old-World  men  pitch  tents, 

Thou,  taught  by  fate  to  know  Jehovah's  plan 

That  men's  devices  can't  unmake  a  man, 

An'  whose  free  latch-string  never  was  drawed  in 

Against  the  poorest  child  of  Adam's  kin, — 

The  grave's  not  dug  where  traitor  hands  shall  lay 

In  fearful  haste  thy  murdered  corse  away." 

There  was  never  plainer  speech  to  England  than  he  uttered  in 
the  letter  preliminary  to  the  Biglow  Paper  where  this  passage 
occurs,  and  in  the  more  generally  remembered  verse  with  which 
the  Paper  ends: 

"The  South  says  'Poor  folks  down  I9  John, 

An'  'All  men  up  /'    say  we, — 
White,  yaller,  black,  an'  brown,  John: 

Now  which  is  your  idee? 
Ole  Uncle  S.  sez  he,  'I  guess 

John  preaches  wal,'  sez  he: 
'But,  sermon  thru,  and  come  to  du, 

Why,  there's  the  old  J.  B. 
A  crowdin*  you  and  me!' 

"God  means  to  make  this  land,  John, 

Clear  thru,  from  sea  to  sea, 
Believe  an*  understand,  John, 

The  wuth  o'  bein'  free. 
Ole  Uncle  S.  sez  he,  'I  guess 

God's  price  is  high,'  sez  he; 
'But  nothin*  else  than  wut  He  sells 

Wears  long,  an'  thet  J.  B. 
May  larn,  like  you  an'  me'." 

Yet  England  welcomed  him.  Ancestrally  he  was  hers,  just 
as  truly  as  he  was  ours;  and  he  kept,  beyond  most  of  us,  the 
full  sturdiness  of  ancestral  English  fibre.  Our  national  heart 
strings  have  sometimes  got  a  little  unstrung;  they  have  been 
apt  to  growl  or  to  complain  before  ^Eolian  blasts  of  plain- 
speaking.  It  was  not  so  with  him.  For  all  his  Americanism, 
the  heart  of  him  stayed  stoutly  in  tune  with  the  brave  old 


[   52] 

heart  of  England  as  it  has  throbbed  through  the  ages.  He 
could  give  strong  blows  without  malice,  and  take  them  un- 
resenting.  He  would  not  have  been  himself  if  his  temper  had 
not  rung  true  as  steel.  That  vibrant  note  is  not  only  Ameri 
can;  it  is  English,  too.  Once  they  can  hear  it  amid  the  trou 
blous  discords  of  any  passing  time,  Englishmen  and  Americans 
alike  must  wonderingly  feel  how  it  can  ultimately  resolve 
discord  into  harmony. 

•  A  little  while  ago  I  recalled  how,  so  lately  as  1877,  a  Bos- 
tonian,  asked  in  London  whether  he  knew  Mr.  Lowell,  hon 
estly  answered  "Which?"  Five  years  later,  there  could  have 
been  no  such  doubt;  and  such  a  doubt  can  hardly  occur  again. 
The  sturdy  virtue  of  the  native  stock  he  sprang  from  will 
long  be  remembered  in  New  England;  alone  of  its  scions, 
though,  he  chanced  to  prove  its  virtue  before  the  eyes  of  the 
whole  English-speaking  world.  The  window  which  com 
memorates  him  at  Westminster  Abbey  is  a  tribute  not  to  his 
kinsmen  or  to  his  countrymen  but  to  him,  as  he  faithfully  em 
bodied  kinsmen,  and  countrymen  and  kinship — a  little  more 
than  kin  even  though  less  than  kind.  It  is  a  tribute,  no  doubt, 
like  the  earlier  tributes  of  Oxford  and  of  Cambridge,  to  the 
man  of  letters  who  so  loved  the  secular  literature  of  our  Eng 
lish  language  that  he  has  incalculably  helped  others  to  love 
it  too.  It  is  a  tribute,  as  well,  to  the  public  man,  fearlessly 
loyal  not  only  to  country  and  to  duty,  but  also  to  that  highest 
of  all  ideals,  Veritas  (Truth),  which  has  dwelt  in  the  hearts 
of  Harvard  men  ever  since  their  College  shield  was  adopted, 
when  Charles  the  First  was  King.  Most  of  all,  however,  that 
window  is  a  tribute  to  the  man  himself,  still  chief  among  the 
growing  and  goodly  fellowship  of  those  whose  happy  lot  has 
been  to  serve  America  and  England  alike  as  international 
friends  and  interpreters. 

Already,  perhaps,  the  relentless  years  begin  to  make  him 
seem  a  thing  of  the  past.  Just  now,  to  go  no  further,  the 
spirit  of  reform  seems  at  least  for  the  while  recklessly  impa 
tient  of  such  balancing  sense  of  tradition  as  kept  him,  a  life- 


I  53  J 

long  reformer,  loyal  to  that  which  is  precious  in  the  past; 
the  spirit  of  letters  seems  vulgarized,  sensualized,  brutalized; 
the  spirit  of  democracy  no  longer  seems  quite  consonant  with 
that  of  freedom;  and  American  nationality  seems  to  have 
forgotten  that  there  has  ever  been  or  that  there  can  ever  be 
such  a  thing  as  traditional  American  nativity.  America,  we 
are  told  incessantly  and  everywhere,  must  come  to  be  some 
thing  else  than  America  has  been.  So  it  must,  for  better  or 
for  worse,  in  almost  all  aspects  but  one.  In  one,  and  not  the 
least  important,  however,  it  may  grow  to  be  more  like  an 
cestral  New  England  than  may  now  seem  quite  imaginable. 
At  this  moment,  few  of  our  countrymen  find  themselves  living 
where  their  fathers  lived  before  them;  and  millions  are  either 
foreign  by  birth  or  at  farthest  the  own  children  of  foreigners. 
Here  the  generations  and  the  centuries  must  slowly  but  surely 
do  their  work.  In  a  hundred  years  more,  there  will  be  count 
less  multitudes,  all  the  way  from  sea  to  sea,  who  shall  have 
known  no  other  home  than  that  where  their  native  eyes  opened, 
and  to  whom  tales  of  the  lands  or  of  the  regions  whence  their 
fathers  came  shall  mean  hardly  more  than  is  meant  to  any 
modern  by  the  glory  that  was  Greece  or  the  grandeur  that  was 
Rome.  When  this  time  comes,  Americans,  no  matter  what 
their  origin,  must  inevitably  find  themselves  in  one  respect 
akin  to  Lowell  as  few  can  be  yet;  for  both  in  the  flesh  and  in 
the  spirit  they  will  never  have  known  any  native  country  but 
their  own,  which  is  ours.  That  country  will  be  English- 
speaking,  and  thus,  like  ourselves,  imbued  with  old  English 
tradition.  What  its  people  will  be  like  we  cannot  tell,  nor 
live  to  know.  There  is  room,  though,  for  faith  that  the  new 
native  America  shall  prove  in  a  thousand  ways  its  American 
fellowship  with  the  old.  If  so,  there  is  ground  for  hope  that 
the  native  New  England  of  the  past  has  fulfilled  a  mission  now 
unsuspected,  foretelling  and  foreshadowing  the  native  America 
of  the  future. 

"It  is  possible,"  wrote  Cotton  Mather,  "that  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  carried  some  thousands  of  Reformers  into  the 


[54] 

retirements  of  an  American  desert,  on  purpose  that,  with  an 
opportunity  granted  unto  many  of  his  faithful  servants  to 
enjoy  the  precious  liberty  of  their  Ministry,  though  in  the 
midst  of  many  temptations  all  their  days,  He  might  there, 
to  them  first,  and  then  by  them,  give  a  specimen  of  many  good 
things  which  He  would  have  His  Churches  elsewhere  aspire 
and  arise  unto;  and  this  being  done,  He  knows  whether  there 
be  not  all  done,  that  New  England  was  planted  for;  and 
whether  the  Plantation  may  not,  soon  after  this,  come  to 
nothing."  Lowell,  I  think,  never  quite  gave  Cotton  Mather 
his  due;  and  surely  would  no  more  have  subscribed  than  we 
to  the  literal  doctrine  here  set  forth.  Yet  the  spirit  of  that 
doctrine  is  living  still,  and  not  least  because  Lowell  was  among 
those  who  cherished  it.  Creeds  are  temporal  things;  but  the 
truth  they  strive  to  imprison  in  words  is  eternal.  The 
Churches  of  Mather's  time  are  dead  and  gone;  so,  in  many 
aspects,  is  the  traditional  Democracy  of  New  England  on 
which  Lowell  based  hope  for  constant  betterment  of  earthly 
existence.  New  England  herself  no  longer  looms  large  in  the 
perspective  of  American  nationality;  before  long  she  may  sink 
beyond  the  scope  of  any  but  retrospective  sight.  Whether 
or  no,  so  long  as  the  changing  old  order  still  yields  place  to 
new,  instead  of  to  chaos,  we  may  humbly  believe  that  the 
many  ways  in  which  God  shall  fulfil  Himself  will  stay  multi- 
tudinously  and  inexhaustibly  incorrupt.  All  He  demands  is 
unswerving  faith  in  the  truth  of  righteousness. 

Unless  I  am  all  wrong,  those  of  us  who  years  ago  absorbed 
the  spirit  of  Lowell's  teaching  can  never  quite  lose  this  abiding 
faith,  ancestral  to  England,  ancestral  to  New  England,  and 
glowing  now  beneath  the  crust  material  of  life  both  in  our 
Mother  Country  and  among  our  American  selves.  If  so, 
even  though  he  might  not  have  acknowledged  the  letter  of  his 
teaching  in  such  form  as  it  has  assumed  with  me  after  the 
glossing  experience  of  more  than  forty  years,  I  can  hardly 
doubt  that  he  would  have  recognized  its  spirit.  Since  New 
England  was  founded,  England  has  had  two  Civil  Wars; 


t55] 

and  so  has  America.  The  Civil  War  of  the  Seventeenth  Cen 
tury  was  purely  English;  and  long  ago  the  discords  of  Cava 
liers  and  Roundheads  have  been  forgotten  in  the  renewed 
spiritual  kinship  which  reverences  the  loyalty  both  of  Charles 
asserting  the  rights  of  Englishmen  and  of  Cromwell  asserting 
the  might  of  England.  The  Civil  War  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury  was  purely  American;  and  already  it  begins  to  be  for 
gotten  in  the  spiritual  kinship  which  gladly  counts  among  the 
heroes  of  our  country  both  Lincoln  and  Lee.  The  Civil  War 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century  was  common  to  England  and 
America;  and  by  calling  it  a  Revolution  we  have  disguised 
to  this  day  the  fact  that  it  hardly  disturbed,  even  among 
ourselves,  the  diuturnity  of  our  Common  Law.  Truly,  how 
ever,  this  law,  like  the  language  in  which  it  speaks  and  the 
literature  which  makes  that  language  deathless,  stays  com 
mon  to  England  and  to  America  alike;  so,  for  all  their  persis 
tent  or  recurrent  discords,  nothing  can  destroy  the  spiritual 
kinship  of  England  and  America  until  our  living  tongue  shall 
have  stiffened  into  the  marble  rigidity  of  classic  changelessness. 
Therefore,  as  at  last  we  are  beginning  to  know  and  to  feel, 
we  can  both  be  our  own  best  selves  only  when  we  strive 
towards  truth  and  righteousness  not  apart  but  together. 
So  even  already,  for  such  as  will  believe,  Lowell  is  the  prophet 
of  a  peace  which,  God  willing,  shall  pass  all  understanding. 

And  yet,  so  long  as  any  of  us  who  knew  him  linger  living, 
whether  across  seas  or  here,  this  can  never  be  quite  the  whole 
story.  Rather  our  last  thought,  like  our  first,  must  be  of  the 
man  himself,  as  he  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being.  Noth 
ing  can  quite  replace  the  magic  of  his  presence;  and  yet  as  he 
wrote  of  Louis  Agassiz : 

"His  magic  was  not  far  to  seek, — 
He  was  so  human !  " 


MR.  ALFRED  NOYES 

Chancellor  Sloane :  Mr.  Alfred  Noyes  made  a  confession  to 
me  yesterday,  which  I  take  the  liberty  of  repeating,  although 
it  may  violate  the  confessional.  He  said:  "  When  I  return  in 
a  short  time  to  my  own  dear  native  land,  I  am  going  to  be 
a  little,  and  perhaps  a  great  deal,  homesick."  He  has  be 
come  in  a  way  one  of  us,  and  he  is  to  favor  us  by  reading 
two  of  his  poems. 

Mr.  Noyes:  The  first  poem  which  I  am  to  read  was  sug 
gested  by  that  wonderful  spectacle  on  Fifth  Avenue  during 
the  Fourth  Liberty  Loan  campaign,  when  the  flags  of  all  the 
nations  were  displayed.  It  had  its  origin  one  night  when 
the  avenue  was  somewhat  deserted  and  the  west  wind  came 
blowing  along,  tossing  those  flags,  and  suggested,  as  it  has 
always  suggested  in  English  poetry,  the  "Birth  of  the 
English  Spirit/' 

"THE  AVENUE  OF  THE  ALLIES"* 

This  is  the  song  of  the  wind  as  it  came 
Tossing  the  flags  of  the  nations  to  flame: 

/  am  the  breath  of  God.  I  am  His  laughter. 
I  am  His  Liberty.     That  is  my  name. 

So  it  descended,  at  night,  on  the  city. 

So  it  went  lavishing  beauty  and  pity, 

Lighting  the  lordliest  street  of  the  world 

With  half  of  the  banners  that  earth  has  unfurled; 

*  Reproduced  by  permission  from  "The  New  Morning,"  by  Alfred  Noyes. 
Copyright,  1918,  by  Alfred  Noyes.  Copyright,  1919,  by  Frederick  A.  Stokes 
Company. 

[56] 


[57] 

Over  the  lamps  that  are  brighter  than  stars. 
Laughing  aloud  on  its  way  to  the  wars, 
Proud  as  America,  sweeping  along 
Death  and  destruction  like  notes  in  a  song, 
Leaping  to  battle  as  man  to  his  mate, 
Joyous  as  God  when  he  moved  to  create, — 

Never  was  voice  of  a  nation  so  glorious, 
Glad  of  its  cause  and  afire  with  its  fate ! 
Never  did  eagle  on  mightier  pinion 
Tower  to  the  height  of  a  brighter  dominion, 
Kindling  the  hope  of  the  prophets  to  flame, 
Calling  aloud  on  the  deep  as  it  came, 

Cleave  me  a  way  for  an  army  with  banners. 
I  am  His  Liberty.     That  is  my  name. 

Know  you  the  meaning  of  all  they  are  doing? 
Know  you  the  light  that  their  soul  is  pursuing? 
Know  you  the  might  of  the  world  they  are  making, 
This  nation  of  nations  whose  heart  is  awaking? 
What  is  this  mingling  of  peoples  and  races? 
Look  at  the  wonder  and  joy  in  their  faces! 
Look  how  the  folds  of  the  union  are  spreading ! 
Look,  for  the  nations  are  come  to  their  wedding. 
How  shall  the  folk  of  our  tongue  be  afraid  of  it? 
England  was  born  of  it.     England  was  made  of  it, 
Made  of  this  welding  of  tribes  into  one, 
This  marriage  of  pilgrims  that  followed  the  sun ! 
Briton  and  Roman  and  Saxon  were  drawn 
By  winds  of  this  Pentecost,  out  of  the  dawn, 
Westward,  to  make  her  one  people  of  many; 
But  here  is  a  union  more  mighty  than  any. 
Know  you  the  soul  of  this  deep  exultation? 
Know  you  the  word  that  goes  forth  to  this  nation? 

/  am  the  breath  of  God.     I  am  His  Liberty. 
Let  there  be  light  over  all  his  creation. 


Over  this  Continent,  wholly  united, 

They  that  were  foemen  in  Europe  are  plighted. 

Here,  in  a  league  that  our  blindness  and  pride 

Doubted  and  flouted  and  mocked  and  denied, 

Dawns  the  Republic,  the  laughing,  gigantic 

Europe,  united,  beyond  the  Atlantic. 

That  is  America,  speaking  one  tongue, 

Acting  her  epics  before  they  are  sung, 

Driving  her  rails  from  the  palms  to  the  snow, 

Through  States  that  are  greater  than  Emperors  know, 

Forty-eight  States  that  are  empires  in  might, 

But  ruled  by  the  will  of  one  people  tonight, 

Nerved  as  one  body,  with  net-works  of  steel, 

Merging  their  strength  in  the  one  Commonweal, 

Brooking  no  poverty,  mocking  at  Mars, 

Building  their  cities  to  talk  with  the  stars. 

Thriving,  increasing  by  myriads  again 

Till  even  in  numbers  old  Europe  may  wane. 

How  shall  a  son  of  the  England  they  fought 

Fail  to  declare  the  full  pride  of  his  thought, 

Stand  with  the  scoffers  who,  year  after  year, 
Bring  the  Republic  their  half-hidden  sneer? 
Now,  as  in  beauty  she  stands  at  our  side, 
Who  shall  withhold  the  full  gift  of  his  pride? 
Not  the  great  England  who  knows  that  her  son, 
Washington,  fought  her,  and  Liberty  won. 
England,  whose  names  like  the  stars  in  their  station, 
Stand  at  the  foot  of  that  world's  Declaration, — 
Washington,  Livingston,  Langdon,  she  claims  them, 
It  is  her  right  to  be  proud  when  she  names  them, 
Proud  of  that  voice  in  the  night  as  it  came, 
Tossing  the  flags  of  the  nations  to  flame: 

7  am  the  breath  of  God.     I  am  His  laughter. 
I  am  His  Liberty.     That  is  my  name. 


[591 

Flags,  in  themselves,  are  but  rags  that  are  dyed. 
Flags,  in  that  wind,  are  like  nations  enskied. 
See,  how  they  grapple  the  night  as  it  rolls 
And  trample  it  under  like  triumphing  souls. 
Over  the  city  that  never  knew  sleep, 
Look  at  the  riotous  folds  as  they  leap. 

Thousands  of  tri-colors,  laughing  for  France, 
Ripple  and  whisper  and  thunder  and  dance; 
Thousands  of  flags  for  Great  Britain  aflame 
Answer  their  sisters  in  Liberty's  name. 
Belgium  is  burning  in  pride  overhead. 
Poland  is  near,  and  her  sunrise  is  red. 
Under  and  over,  and  fluttering  between, 
Italy  burgeons  in  red,  white,  and  green. 
See,  how  they  climb  like  adventurous  flowers, 
Over  the  tops  of  the  terrible  towers.  .  .  . 
There,  in  the  darkness,  the  glories  are  mated. 
There,  in  the  darkness,  a  world  is  created. 
There,  in  this  Pentecost,  streaming  on  high. 
There,  with  a  glory  oj  stars  in  the  sky. 
There  the  broad  flag  of  our  union  and  liberty 
Rides  the  proud  night-wind  and  tyrannies  die. 


Mr.  Noyes:  The  next  lines  were  suggested  by  the  memo 
rial  service  which  was  held  in  New  York  after  the  armistice 
was  signed.  The  most  impressive  feature  of  that  service,  as 
I  remember  it,  was  the  Funeral  March,  during  which  every 
one  stood. 


VICTORY  * 

(WRITTEN  AFTER  THE  BRITISH  SERVICE  AT  TRINITY  CHURCH,  NEW  YORK.) 

I 

Before  those  golden  altar-lights  we  stood, 
Each  one  of  us  remembering  his  own  dead. 

A  more  than  earthly  beauty  seemed  to  brood 

On  that  hushed  throng,  and  bless  each  bending  head, 

Beautiful  on  that  gold,  the  deep-sea  blue 
Of  those  young  seamen,  ranked  on  either  side, 

Blent  with  the  khaki,  while  the  silence  grew 

Deep,  as  for  wings — oh,  deep  as  England's  pride. 

Beautiful  on  that  gold,  two  banners  rose — 
Two  flags  that  told  how  Freedom's  realm  was  made, 

One  fair  with  stars  of  hope,  and  one  that  shows 
The  glorious  cross  of  England's  long  crusade; 

Two  flags,  now  joined,  till  that  high  will  be  done 
Which  sent  them  forth  to  make  the  whole  world  one. 


II 

There  were  no  signs  of  joy  that  eyes  could  see, 
Our  hearts  were  all  three  thousand  miles  away. 

There  were  no  trumpets  blown  for  victory. 
A  million  dead  were  calling  us  that  day. 

And  eyes  grew  blind,  at  times;    but  grief  was  deep, 
Deeper  than  any  foes  or  friends  have  known; 

*  Reproduced  by  permission  from  "The  New  Morning,"  by  Alfred  Noyes. 
Copyright,  1918,  by  Alfred  Noyes.  Copyright,  1919,  by  Frederick  A.  Stokes 
Company. 

[60] 


[61  ] 

For  oh,  my  country's  lips  are  locked  to  keep 
Her  bitterest  loss  her  own,  and  all  her  own. 

Only  the  music  told  what  else  was  dumb, 
The  funeral  march  to  which  our  pulses  beat; 

For  all  our  dead  went  by,  to  a  muffled  drum. 
We  heard  the  tread  of  all  those  phantom  feet. 

Yes.     There  was  victory !     Deep  in  every  soul. 
We  heard  them  marching  to  their  unseen  goal. 

Ill 

There,  once  again,  we  saw  the  Cross  go  by, 

The  Cross  that  fell  with  all  those  glorious  towers, 

Burnt  black  in  France  or  mocked  on  Calvary, 
Till — in  one  night — the  crosses  rose  like  flowers, 

Legions  of  small  white  crosses,  mile  on  mile, 

Pencilled  with  names  that  had  outfought  all  pain, 

Where  every  shell-torn  acre  seems  to  smile— 
Who  shall  destroy  the  cross  that  rose  again  ? 

Out  of  the  world's  Walpurgis,  where  hope  perished, 
Where  all  the  forms  of  faith  in  ruin  fell, 

Where  every  sign  of  heaven  that  earth  had  cherished 
Shrivelled  among  the  lava-floods  of  hell, 

The  eternal  Cross  that  conquers  might  with  right 
Rose  like  a  star  to  lead  us  through  the  night. 

IV 

How  shall  the  world  remember?     Men  forget: 
Our  dead  are  all  too  many  even  for  Fame ! 

Man's  justice  kneels  to  kings,  and  pays  no  debt 
To  those  who  never  courted  her  acclaim. 


[62] 

Cheat  not  your  heart  with  promises  to  pay 
For  gifts  beyond  all  price  so  freely  given. 

Where  is  the  heart  so  rich  that  it  can  say 

To  those  who  mourn,  "I  will  restore  your  heaven"? 

But  these,  with  their  own  hands,  laid  up  their  treasure 
Where  never  an  emperor  can  break  in  and  steal, 

Treasure  for  those  that  loved  them  past  all  measure 
In  those  high  griefs  that  earth  can  never  heal, 

Proud  griefs,  that  walk  on  earth,  yet  gaze  above, 
Knowing  that  sorrow  is  but  remembered  love. 


Love  that  still  holds  us  with  immortal  power, 

Yet  cannot  lift  us  to  His  realm  of  light; 
Love  that  still  shows  us  heaven  for  one  brief  hour 

Only  to  daunt  the  heart  with  that  sheer  height; 

Love  that  is  made  of  loveliness  entire 

In  form  and  thought  and  act;    and  still  must  shame  us 
Because  we  ever  acknowledge  and  aspire, 

And  yet  let  slip  the  shining  hands  that  claim  us. 

Oh,  if  this  Love  might  cloak  with  rags  His  glory, 
Laugh,  eat  and  drink,  and  dwell  with  suffering  men, 

Sit  with  us  at  our  hearth,  and  hear  our  story, 

This  world — we  thought — might  be  transfigured  then. 

"But  oh,"  Love  answered,  with  swift  human  tears, 
"All  these  things  have  I  done,  these  many  years." 

VI 

"This  day,"  Love  said,  "if  ye  will  hear  my  voice, 
I  mount  and  sing  with  birds  in  all  your  skies. 


[63  ] 

I  am  the  soul  that  calls  you  to  rejoice, 
And  every  wayside  flower  is  my  disguise. 

"Look  closely.     Are  the  wings  too  wide  for  pity? 

Look  closely.     Do  these  tender  hues  betray? 
How  often  have  I  sought  my  Holy  City? 

How  often  have  ye  turned  your  hearts  away? 

"Is  there  not  healing  in  the  beauty  I  bring  you? 

Am  I  not  whispering  in  green  leaves  and  rain, 
Singing  in  all  that  woods  and  seas  can  sing  you? 

Look,  once,  on  Love,  and  earth  is  heaven  again. 

"Oh,  did  your  Spring  but  once  a  century  waken, 
The  heaven  of  heavens  for  this  would  be  forsaken." 


VII 

There's  but  one  gift  that  all  our  dead  desire, 
One  gift  that  men  can  give,  and  that's  a  dream, 

Unless  we,  too,  can  burn  with  that  same  fire 
Of  sacrifice — die  to  the  things  that  seem; 

Die  to  the  little  hatreds;  die  to  greed; 

Die  to  the  old  ignoble  selves  we  knew; 
Die  to  the  base  contempts  of  sect  and  creed, 

And  rise  again,  like  these,  with  souls  as  true. 

Nay  (since  these  died  before  their  task  was  finished) 
Attempt  new  heights,  bring  even  their  dreams  to  birth 

Build  us  that  better  world,  oh,  not  diminished 
By  one  true  splendor  that  they  planned  on  earth. 

And  that's  not  done  by  sword,  or  tongue,  or  pen, 
There's  but  one  way.     God  make  us  better  men. 


Chancellor  Sloane :  When  one  of  these  noted  wits  [indicat 
ing  two  officers  of  The  Pilgrims]  turned  to  Professor  Leacock 
yesterday  and  said  to  him  that  he  had  impoverished  himself 
in  the  purchase  of  his  books,  we  quite  understood  that, 
behind  the  mask  of  his  mirth,  there  was  the  professor.  I 
introduce  to  you  Professor  Stephen  Leacock. 

PROFESSOR  STEPHEN  BUTLER  LEACOCK 

Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen:  Since  I  have  the 
chance  to  do  what  I  know  many  of  you  would  like  to  do,  if 
you  were  standing  here  in  my  place,  may  I  first  turn  and 
express  to  Mr.  Noyes  our  appreciation  of  the  very  wonderful 
and  stirring  verses  that  he  has  just  read  to  us?  I  wish  I 
had  written  them  myself. 

You  do  me,  Mr.  Chancellor,  a  very  great  honor  in  asking 
me  to  speak  here  today,  and  in  attaching  to  my  name  a  great 
distinction  in  the  words,  "of  Canada."  But  I  could  have 
wished  that  some,  better  eloquence  than  mine  might  have 
been  brought  into  service  to  express  the  kind  of  thoughts  that 
I  want  to  convey  to  you  upon  such  a  momentous  occasion  as 
this. 

We  are  here  gathered  together  today  to  honor  the  memory 
of  James  Russell  Lowell,  a  man  whose  name  is  a  household 
word,  whose  books  are  household  treasures  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic.  This  would  have  been  a  good  thing  to  do,  even 
if  we  had  not  had  the  experience  of  the  last  four  years  of  war. 
But  you  all  know  and  you  all  feel  from  the  sense  of  this  gather 
ing  that  such  celebrations  as  this  have  acquired  a  new  signifi 
cance  after  the  experience  we  have  gone  through.  We  are 
beginning  to  crown  anew  the  heads  of  the  men  of  literature, 
all  of  them  from  Shakespeare  on  down  to  our  own  time,  whose 

[64] 


[65] 

books  are  the  common  gift  and  heritage  of  the  people  of 
Britain  and  America.  They  shine  for  us  with  a  new  light, — 
the  light  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  unity. 

We  have  made  all  too  much  in  history  of  our  political 
quarrels.  We  have  been,  as  British  and  American  people, 
rather  apt  to  put  out  the  worst  side  of  ourselves  for  our  neigh 
bors  to  look  at.  We  may  sometimes  have  misled  them.  I 
am  told  that  it  is  historically  recorded  that  the  years  1776  to 
1 783  were  years  during  which  the  outside  world  really  thought 
that  we  were  having  an  actual  war.  Not  at  all.  A  difference 
of  opinion  was  being  settled  in  the  only  way  that  English 
men  and  Americans  have  ever  been  able  to  settle  their  dif 
ferences  of  opinion.  And,  though  it  left  behind  it  much  con 
troversy,  the  result  on  the  whole  was  momentous  for  the  his 
tory  of  the  world.  We  do  not,  up  in  Canada,  draw  our  blinds 
against  the  sunlight  on  the  Fourth  of  July.  We  throw  them 
wide  open  and  we  like  to  think  that  from  that  Declaration  of 
Independence  there  sprang  the  mother  republic  for  the  re 
publics  of  all  the  world  to  pattern  themselves  upon,  and  that 
we,  none  the  less,  partly  through  the  reaction  of  it,  have  been 
able  to  found  for  all  the  world  to  see,  an  imperial  democracy 
built  like  yours  upon  the  common  principles  of  freedom. 

I  say  that  we  have  made  too  much  of  our  quarrels  in  the 
past.  We  have  heard  too  much  of  our  Oregon  disputes,  and 
our  "  Fifty-four- Forty  or  Fight,"  and  our  other  differences  of 
opinion,  of  our  dispute  during  your  civil  war,  and  of  the  sorry 
controversy  that  might  have  plunged  us  into  war  over  the 
jungles  and  mud-flats  of  Venezuela.  We  know  now  that, 
when  the  test  comes,  we  stand  or  fall  together.  And  that  has 
not  been  done  by  any  work  of  diplomacy  or  by  the  operations 
of  courts  or  ambassadors,  but  because  we  have  something  that 
is  infinitely  greater  in  common  than  that, — a  common  his 
tory  and  literature,  and  the  aspirations  that  lie  behind  them 
and  are  the  basis  of  our  English  and  American  literature. 
What  nobler  thing  can  you  find  for  the  boys  and  girls  of  a 
nation  to  be  brought  up  on  than  the  literature  of  English 


[66] 

school  boys  and  English  childhood?  What  nobler  influence 
will  you  find  than  these  somewhat  despised  products  of  our 
Victorian  age?  I  know  but  little  of  the  literature  of  Germany, 
still  less  of  that  of  Austria  or  Turkey.  Nor  do  I  want  to  know 
anything  more  of  them  than  I  know  now.  But  I  suspect 
this, — that  if  you  were  to  take  from  the  literature  of  Germany 
the  verbose  and  abstract  windiness  which  comprises  the 
philosophy  of  that  people,  you  would  find  in  it  nothing  that 
would  compare  with  the  splendid  bedrock,  the  magnificent  and 
noble  aspirations  upon  which  the  literature  of  England  and 
America  have  been  built. 

And  this,  may  I  say,  too?  I  come  to  you  here  as  one  of 
the  representatives  of  Canada,  and  we  could  form  for  our 
selves  no  nobler  name,  no  better  insignia  of  citizenship,  be  it 
said  with  all  reverence  to  you  English  and  American  people, 
than  that  which  we  have.  There  was  a  time  when  that  was 
not  so.  There  was  a  time  when  we  in  Canada  were  thinking 
much  upon  ourselves  and  wondering  what  our  path  in  life 
should  be.  We  seemed  to  be  something  greater  than  a  colony, 
and  something  less  than  a  nation,  and  in  a  certain  sense  we 
were  inclined  to  envy  you,  and  you,  perhaps,  in  all  kindliness, 
to  look  down  upon  us  as  a  somewhat  lower  order  of  men.  That 
day  is  past.  The  last  four  years  have  given  their  memorials 
to  a  new  pride  on  which  to  base  our  citizenship.  The  poppies 
that  blow  in  Flanders  Fields  have  carried  back  to  us  from  our 
dead  poet  who  wrote  of  them  and  from  those  who  lie  there 
buried  beside  him,  a  message  of  union  and  citizenship  for  all 
time.  We  in  Canada  are  now  able  to  reach  out  our  hands 
to  you  in  a  way  that  never  could  be  done  before;  and  we 
can  dismiss  all  idea  of  the  possibility  of  our  being  swallowed 
up,  or  overshadowed  in  the  sunshine  of  your  greatness.  Even 
in  the  cold  light  of  our  northern  Aurora  Borealis,  we  can 
walk  with  upright  head,  and,  in  this  community  of  peoples 
of  which  we  speak,  we  in  Canada,  humble  though  we  are, 
may  perhaps  maintain  a  peculiar  position  of  our  own,  some 
thing  between  the  English  and  Americans — I  will  not  say, 


[67] 

combining  the  virtues  of  both, — I  will  not  say  that,  but  we 
Canadians  are  at  liberty  to  think  it,  if  we  like. 

There  is  much  talk  in  our  time  of  a  League  of  Nations, 
and  I  suppose,  since  the  senator  from  Idaho  is  not  here  today, 
it  may  be  mentioned.  We  have  all  been  perplexed  and  sur 
prised  to  find  how  a  League  of  Nations  is  in  danger  of  dis 
solving,  as  Sir  Herbert  Stephen  describes  it,  into  a  League  of 
Dreams,  and  we  are  all  wondering  how  it  can  be  bound  fast 
and  how  the  clauses  could  be  so  written  that  they  will  hold 
against  strife,  and  it  seems  after  all  as  if  one  must  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  we  can  only  base  it  upon  the  bedrock  of  the 
natural  sympathies  that  exist  between  the  great  nations  of 
the  world,  between  ourselves  and  yourselves  and  between  us 
both  and  the  people  of  France.  Upon  that,  and  that  alone, 
can  you  found  the  permanent  covenant  of  the  League  of 
Nations. 

For  that,  what  can  contribute  more  than  the  kind  of 
celebrations  we  have  been  holding  here,  and  the  kind  of  sen 
timent  we  have  been  expressing,  and  the  kind  of  good  fellow 
ship  that  I  feel  we  have  all  been  pledging  toward  one  another 
now  and  forever  more. 


Chancellor  Sloane:  There  is  another  great  capital  of  the 
West,  as  well  as  of  the  North  and  East,  and  from  that  comes 
to  us  one  of  the  members  of  the  Institute,  lawyer,  writer, 
poet.  Mr.  Edgar  Lee  Masters  will  read  a  memorial  to  this 
anniversary  and  a  tribute  to  England  which  he  has  written 
for  this  occasion. 


MR.   EDGAR  LEE  MASTERS 

MEMBER    OF    THE    INSTITUTE 

THE  TIE 

If  heaven  had  meant  we  should  be  enemies, 
Though  from  your  loins,  England,  we  had  sprung, 
It  had  not  made  us  so  by  severing  seas, 
But  cursed  our  converse  with  a  different  tongue. 

We  brought  your  language  with  us,  if  we  speak 
Your  language  with  a  drawl  or  nasal  twang, 
We  mould  it  boldly  as  we  live  and  seek; 
Some  words  of  Shakespeare  in  his  time  were  slang. 

If  you  have  spread  your  glory  in  the  world 
Your  navy  was  of  use,  perhaps  your  sword. 
But  long  ago  your  banner  had  been  furled 
Save  for  the  conquest  of  your  written  word. 

In  this  we  share.     The  man  we  celebrate, 
At  Birmingham  spoke  in  an  utterance  clear 
Of  hopes  for  which  we  stand  the  advocate, 
The  freedom  that  our  common  hearts  revere. 

[68] 


[69] 

You  taught  us  words  to  write  a  lasting  charter: 
What  people  now  impugn  its  sacred  worth? 
A  world  republic  of  free  thought  and  barter 
Was  sketched  in  English  on  July  the  fourth. 

It  was  the  very  year  your  Adam  Smith 
Wrote  down  a  merchant  culture  for  mankind. 
The  new  day  asks  us  to  put  by  the  myth 
Of  gold  alone  that  keeps  the  nations  blind. 

New  Zealand  and  the  courts  of  every  power, 
America,  Australia,  Canada 
In  English  talk  the  business  of  the  hour, 
Take  counsel  in  its  literature  and  law. 

This  is  the  backbone  of  a  League  of  Peace. 
Nations  we  keep  as  houses,  if  you  will, 
To  which  for  private  talk  we  have  release 
From  market  places  where  we  match  our  skill. 

There  may  be  Leagues  of  Nations — they  must  rest 
On  words  of  understanding,  not  decrees. 
We  cannot  bring  together  East  and  West 
Except  as  equals,  as  democracies. 

Your  noble  spirits  have  not  failed  as  yet 
To  honor  Washington  and  Lincoln  too, 
We  still  remember  you  did  not  forget 
To  give  Walt  Whitman  at  the  first  his  due. 

And  thus  I  speak,  because  your  sons  of  light 
Join  with  us  in  this  tribute  to  a  man 
Who  kept  the  flame  of  duty  pure  and  bright — 
Lowell,  who  sensed  the  faith  American. 


[70] 

He  helped  to  bring  us  closer,  make  us  friends. 
But  if  we  would  be  closer,  wholly  free, 
We  must  resolve  the  problem  which  transcends 
AH  other  problems,  that  of  poverty. 

We  should  not  have  it  with  us.     As  for  you, 
Something  remains  with  you  of  gavelkind. 
Uproot  it,  and  we  promise,  if  you  do, 
To  try  to  rid  us  of  the  village  mind. 

When  Lowell  lived  we  had  the  literal  whip, 
Chains  tangible,  the  rule  of  ignorant  blood. 
Our  task  is  greater.     Oh,  for  fellowship 
To  extirpate  the  things  for  which  they  stood. 

Insatiate  rules  and  laws  tyrannical 

Are  chains  no  less!    Come,  soldiers  from  the  war, 

And  help  us  in  our  task  political, 

Destroy  the  banal  gardens  we  abhor; 

Your  fathers  from  our  civil  war  returned, 
As  from  a  kiln,  vessels  for  us  to  see 
The  emblem  of  the  Union  on  them  burned. 
Come  to  us  with  the  word  of  Liberty. 

The  war  has  sent  us  running  here  and  there. 
Some  foolish  feet  may  stumble  in  the  quest 
Over  forgotten  books  of  heart's  despair 
With  wisdom  sealed,  too  many  years  at  rest, 

Kicked  by  a  casual  foot,  perhaps  inspired, 

A  thing  of  powder  for  an  ancient  code. 

It  will  be  well  if  what  we  have  desired 

Is  lighted  us  by  thoughts  which  don't  explode. 


[71  J 

These  treasured  spirits  treasured  up  for  us 
Wait  for  release — the  time  is  now  at  hand 
To  take  them  from  their  prisons  dolorous — 
Do  justice  to  the  poor,  and  free  the  land. 

Milton  and  Langland,  Shelley,  Mill  and  Locke, 
Whitman  and  Lincoln,  Lowell,  living  souls, 
Point  to  the  world's  great  federation  clock 
Which  clicks  the  thrilling  minutes  ere  it  tolls. 


Chancellor  Sloane:  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  there  are  some 
men  who  pronounce  a  benediction,  and  there  are  also  others 
who  not  only  do  that,  but  are  themselves  a  benediction, 
and  these  proceedings  will  be  brought  to  a  close  by  such  a 
man,  Mr.  Crothers. 

DR.  SAMUEL  Me  CHORD  CROTHERS 

MEMBER    OF   THE    INSTITUTE 

The  words  of  our  chairman  remind  me  of  one  of  my 
first  experiences  as  a  college  preacher  at  Harvard,  where  the 
college  preacher,  after  the  morning  chapel,  meets  any  of  the 
students  who  come  to  talk  with  him.  My  only  visitor  came 
in  very  hastily,  and  he  said:  "Mr.  Crothers,  I  wanted  to  say 
that  I  liked  your  benediction."  Then  he  left. 

At  the  close  of  this  meeting,  I  feel  that  we  want  to  par 
ticularly  emphasize  one  side  of  Mr.  Lowell  that  is  of  especial 
interest  to  us  at  this  time.  He  was  not  merely  a  man  of 
letters.  He  was  a  patriot  and  a  reformer.  He  was  pro 
foundly  concerned  in  all  movements  that  aimed  at  better 
relations  between  nations.  He  would  have  rejoiced  to  take 
part  in  the  work  of  to-day.  A  number  of  years  ago  a  college 
professor,  then  of  little  note,  wrote  a  delightful  volume  of 
essays,  which  was  a  flat  failure  from  the  publisher's  point  of 
view,  and  I  am  told  that  the  reason  that  the  public  did  not 
take  to  it  enthusiastically  lay  in  the  title,  which  was  "Mere 
Literature."  People  said,  "We  don't  know  who  this  Woodrow 
Wilson  is,  and  if  he  is  only  talking  about  mere  literature,  it 
is  no  use  for  us  earnest  Americans  to  buy  his  books."  The 
public  was  slow  to  appreciate  the  irony  in  the  title.  If  it 
had  taken  the  trouble  to  read  the  book,  it  would  have  learned 
that  the  author  did  not  believe  that  literature  could  be  dis- 

[72] 


[73] 

connected  from  human  interests  and  the  great  movements  of 
humanity.  Heine  declared  that  he  did  not  wish  to  be  re 
membered  merely  as  a  poet,  but  as  a  soldier  in  the  battle  for 
the  liberation  of  humanity. 

There  is  a  stricter  sect  of  literary  people  who  look  upon 
any  infusion  of  purpose  in  literature  as  a  high  crime  and  misde 
meanor.  They  look  upon  it  as  a  sort  of  an  adulteration  of 
the  purity  of  literature  that  ought  to  come  under  the  notice 
of  the  Pure  Food  and  Drug  Law.  It  happens  that  the  group 
of  poets  and  men  of  letters  to  which  Lowell  belonged,  although 
they  might  have  sometimes  proclaimed  this  doctrine,  never 
practised  it.  Emerson  wrote,  "A  new  commandment  gave 
the  smiling  Muse:  Thou  shalt  not  preach/'  But  the  smile 
of  the  Muse  must  have  been  very  ironical  as  she  looked  upon 
her  New  England  votaries.  Preaching  was  a  part  of  their 
nature. 

Lowell  belonged  to  this  group  of  born  preachers.  He  was 
at  his  best  when  he  was  the  spokesman  of  a  cause,  and  if  the 
cause  were  unpopular  the  appeal  was  all  the  greater.  There 
were  three  great  causes  into  which  he  threw  all  the  energy  of 
his  nature.  Two  of  these  succeeded  gloriously  in  his  lifetime. 
The  triumph  of  the  last  great  cause  was  delayed. 

The  first  cause  was  that  of  Anti-Slavery.  In  the  first 
enthusiasm  of  youth  he  hailed  it  as 

"God's  new  Messiah, 
Offering  each  the  bloom  or  blight." 

Here  was  the  choice  between  darkness  and  light. 

After  a  time  he  took  up  the  cause  of  the  Union  in  the 
same  whole-hearted  way.  Lowell  stood  with  Lincoln  and 
interpreted  him  to  the  people.  At  the  close  of  the  Civil 
War  the  Commemoration  Ode  expressed  the  high  mood  of 
the  triumphant  nation. 

But  in  the  two  decades  that  followed,  a  period  of  dis 
appointment  when  American  idealists  were  on  the  defensive, 
Henry  Adams  tells  of  the  way  in  which  the  reformers  strug- 


[74] 

gled  against  the  wave  of  materialism  which  seemed  about  to 
destroy  all  that  they  had  struggled  for.  They  were  con 
sciously  out  of  sympathy  with  the  new  conditions  that  had 
suddenly  developed.  They  were  trying  to  reform  society 
without  really  understanding  the  forces  that  had  suddenly 
come  into  play.  Lowell  felt  this  bewilderment.  He  expresses 
it  in  "The  Cathedral."  Standing  in  the  Cathedral  of 
Chartres,  he  thinks  of  the  difference  between  the  simplicity 
of  mediaeval  religion  and  the  complexity  and  vulgarity  of  the 
American  life  that  confronts  him.  He  confesses  that  he  is 
himself  "the  born  disciple  of  an  elder  time."  He  loves  the 
ancient  sanctities  and  feels  the  necessity  of  an  established 
order.  But  intellectually  he  is  convinced  that  the  new  order 
is  inevitable.  He  believes  in  Democracy,  yet  he  fears  it. 

"Worst  is  not  yet:  lo,  where  his  coming  looms, 
Of  Earth's  anarchic  children  latest  born, 
Democracy." 

This  Western  giant 

"Scorning  refinements  which  he  lacks  himself" 
will  destroy  much  which  he  may  be  unable  to  replace. 

"How  save  the  ark, 
Or  holy  of  holies,  unprofaned  a  day 
From  his  unscrupulous  curiosity 
That  handles  everything  as  if  to  buy, 
Tossing  aside  what  fabrics  delicate 
Suit  not  the  rough-and-tumble  of  his  ways? 
What  hope  for  those  fine-nerved  humanities 
That  made  earth  gracious  once  with  gentler  arts, 
Now  the  rude  hands  have  caught  the  trick  of  thought 
And  claim  an  equal  suffrage  with  the  brain?" 

Lowell  admired  the  backwoodsman  who,  meeting  Caesar, 
"would  slap  his  back,  call  him  'Old  Horse,'  and  challenge  to 
a  drink."  He  was  democratic  enough  to  like  to  see  some  one 
do  that  to  Caesar,  but  he  was  not  democratic  enough  to  enjoy 
having  somebody  do  it  to  him. 


[75l 

During  the  latter  years  of  his  life  there  were  many  notes 
of  discouragement,  as  he  watched  the  progress  of  American 
life.  He  shared  the  discouragements  which  came  to  all  the 
reformers  of  his  period.  And  yet  during  what  was,  in  many 
respects,  a  dark  period  for  the  idealist  he  not  only  fought  a 
good  fight  but  he  kept  the  faith  in  democracy.  It  was  the 
faith  that  in  spite  of  their  lapses  into  materialistic  habits  of 
mind  the  American  people  could  be  trusted  to  rise  to  the  level 
of  the  noblest  opportunity. 

In  "The  Faerie  Queene"  Spenser  pictures  the  meeting  of 
Sir  Artegall,  or  Justice,  with  Sir  Calidore,  or  Courtesy.  Sir 
Artegall  asks  the  nature  of  the  quest,  and  the  other  answers: 

"The  Blatant  Beast,  quoth  he,  I  doe  pursue 
And  through  the  world  incessantly  doe  chase 

Till  I  him  overtake  or  else  subdue; 

Yet  know  I  not  or  how  or  in  what  place 

To  find  him  out;  yet  still  I  forward  trace." 

James  Russell  Lowell  was  one  who  continually  chased  the 
Blatant  Beast  which  was  ravaging  the  world.  He  was  the 
foe  of  all  that  was  ugly  and  sordid  in  our  American  life. 
And  I  know  of  no  one  who  would  have  more  delighted  in  the 
noble  opportunity  that  confronts  our  nation  to-day. 


SUPPLEMENTARY    EVENTS 


REPRESENTATION  OF    "WASHINGTON"  AT 
THE  THEATRE  DU  VIEUX  COLOMBIER 

On  the  20th  of  February,  in  compliment  to  the  Academy 
and  the  National  Institute  of  Arts  and  Letters,  its  parent 
organization,  and  to  their  guests,  and  in  honor  of  the  birthday 
of  Washington,  Monsieur  Jacques  Copeau,  Director-General 
of  the  Theatre  du  Vieux  Colombier,  of  New  York,  courteously 
gave  a  special  matinee  performance  of  the  play  of  "Wash 
ington,"  by  Mr.  Percy  Mac  Kay  e,  a  member  of  the  Institute. 
Following  is  the  programme,  including  La  Fontaine's  "La 
Coupe  Enchantee:" 


[77] 


[  78] 


WASHINGTON— (THE  MAN  WHO  MADE  US) 

FIRST    HALF 
INDUCTION — by  Percy  MacKaye.    Translated  into  French  by  Jacques  Copeau 

PART  II:  AT  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

THE  TRAGIC  MASK Robert  Bogaert 

THE  COMIC  MASK Marcel  Millet 

THE  THEATRE Louis  Jouvet 

LA  COUPE  ENCHANTED — BY  LA  FONTAINE 

ANSELME Robert  Bogaert 

LELIE Jean  Sarment 

JOSSELIN Louis  Jouvet 

BERTRAND Lucien  Weber 

M.  GRIFFON Marcel  Millet 

M.  TOBIE Robert  Casa 

LUCINDE Jeannine  Bresanges 

THIBAUT Remain  Bouquet 

PERRETTE Renne  Bouquet 

ENTR'ACTE 

PROLOGUE  TO  WASHINGTON 
By  Percy  MacKaye — translated  into  French  by  Jacques  Copeau 

THE  TRAGIC  MASK Robert  Bogaert 

THE  COMIC  MASK Marcel  Millet 

THE  THEATRE Louis  Jouvet 

QUILLOQUON,  a  Singer  of  Ballads Lucien  Weber 

Inhibitors,  A  Little  Boy,  A  Little  Girl 
TRANSITIONAL  BALLAD  (sung  by  Quilloquon),  "Down  by  the  Cold  Hillsidey" 

WASHINGTON 

A  Dramatic  Action — by  Percy  MacKaye 
Translated  into  French  by  Pierre  de  Lanux.    Scene  designed  by  Robert  Edmond  Jones 

WASHINGTON Jacques  Copeau 

MARQUIS  DE  LA  FAYETTE Jean  Sarment 

ALEXANDER  HAMILTON Henri  Dhurtal 

THOMAS  PAINE Marcel  Millet 

BARON  VON  STEUBEN Robert  Casa 

COUNT  PULASKI Emile  Chifolian 

BILLY,  Negro  Servant Romain  Bouquet 

A  POST  BOY  (Quilloquon) Lucien  Weber 

SOLDIERS 

SCENE:  Interior  of  Washington's  Tent,  Valley  Forge.  TIME:  Winter  of  1776 


LUNCHEON  BY  THE  PILGRIMS 

On  the  2  ist  of  February  The  Pilgrims  gave  a  luncheon 
to  the  English,  Canadian,  and  Australian  guests  of  the 
Academy  at  the  Union  League  Club,  at  which  were  present 
many  representative  men  of  New  York.  Mr.  George  T. 
Wilson,  Vice-President  of  The  Pilgrims,  presided,  and  the  other 
speakers  were:  Sir  H.  Babington  Smith,  K.  C.  B.,  C.  S.  I., 
Acting  High  Commissioner  of  Great  Britain;  Professor 
Stephen  Butler  Leacock,  Henry  G.  Braddon,  High  Commis 
sioner  for  Australia;  John  Drew,  Job  E.  Hedges,  and  Patrick 
Francis  Murphy. 

Mr.  Robert  Underwood  Johnson,  Permanent  Secretary 
of  the  Academy,  read  the  following  extracts  from  his  Ode, 
entitled  "Hands  Across  Sea:" 

HANDS  ACROSS  SEA 

[1899] 

England,  thou  breeder  of  heroes  and  of  bards, 
Had  ever  nation  manlier  shield  or  song! 
For  thee  such  rivalry  have  sword  and  pen, 
Fame,  from  her  heaped  green,  crowns  with  equal  hand 
The  deathless  deed  and  the  immortal  word. 
For  which  dost  thou  thy  Sidney  hold  more  dear, 
Defense  of  England  or  of  Poesie? 
Cromwell  or  Milton — if  man's  guiding  stars 
Could  vanish  as  they  came — which  wouldst  thou  spare? 
Lost  Kempenfelt  indeed,  were  Cowper  mute! 
To  victory,  not  alone  on  shuddering  seas 
Rode  Nelson,  but  on  Campbell's  tossing  rhyme. 
Hark  to  thy  great  Duke's  greater  dirge,  and  doubt 
For  which  was  Waterloo  the  worthier  won, 
To  change  the  tyrant  on  a  foreign  throne, 
Or  add  a  faultless  ode  to  English  song. 

[79] 


[  8o] 

Great  deeds  make  poets:  by  whose  nobler  word, 
In  turn,  the  blood  of  heroes  is  transfused 
Into  the  veins  of  sluggards,  till  they  rise, 
Surprised,  exalted  to  the  height  of  men. 

Nor  can  Columbia  choose  between  the  two 
Which  give  more  glory  to  thy  Minster  gloom. 
They  are  our  brave,  our  deathless,  our  divine — 
Our  Saxon  grasp  on  their  embattled  swords, 
Our  Saxon  numbers  in  their  lyric  speech. 
We  grudge  no  storied  wreath,  nay,  would  withhold 
Of  bay  or  laurel  not  one  envied  leaf. 


To-day,  not  moved  by  memory  or  fear, 

But  by  the  vision  of  a  nobler  time, 

Millions  cry  toward  thee  in  a  passion  of  peace. 

We  need  thee,  England,  not  in  armed  array 

To  stand  beside  us  in  the  empty  quarrels 

That  kings  pursue,  ere  War  itself  expire 

Like  an  o'er-armored  knight  in  desperate  lunge 

Beneath  the  weight  of  helmet  and  of  lance; 

But  now,  in  conflict  with  an  inner  foe 

Who  shall  in  conquering  either  conquer  both. 

For  it  is  written  in  the  book  of  fate: 

By  no  sword  save  her  own  Jails  Liberty. 

A  wondrous  century  trembles  at  its  dawn, 

Conflicting  currents  telling  its  approach; 

And  while  men  take  new  reckonings  from  the  peaks, 

Reweigh  the  jewel  and  retaste  the  wine, 

Be  ours  to  guard  against  the  impious  hands 

That,  like  rash  children,  tamper  with  that  blade. 

Thou,  too,  hast  seen  the  vision:  shall  it  be 

Only  a  dream,  caught  in  the  web  of  night, 

Lost  through  the  coarser  meshes  of  the  day? 

Or  like  the  beauty  of  the  prismic  bow, 

Which  the  sun's  ardor,  that  creates,  consumes? 

Oh,  may  it  be  the  thing  we  image  it! — 

The  beckoning  spirit  of  our  common  race 

Floating  before  us  in  a  fringe  of  light 

With  Duty's  brow,  Love's  eyes,  the  smile  of  Peace; 

Benignant  figure  of  compelling  mien, 

Star-crowned,  star-girdled,  and  o'erstrewn  with  stars, 

As  though  a  constellation  should  descend 

To  be  fit  courier  to  a  glorious  age. 


LUNCHEON  BY  THE  NATIONAL  INSTITUTE  OF 
ARTS  AND  LETTERS 

Following  the  literary  exercises  the  National  Institute  of 
Arts  and  Letters  gave  an  informal  luncheon  to  the  members 
of  the  Academy  and  their  guests,  at  the  Ritz-Carlton  Hotel. 


The  lines  that  follow,  written  by  one  of  the  Canadian 
guests  of  the  Academy,  were  published  in  the  press  during 
the  week  of  the  commemoration: 

ODE  ON  THE  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE 
BIRTH  OF  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 

BY  DUNCAN  CAMPBELL  SCOTT 

Lift  up  thine  eyes,  Sad  Earth, 

From  contemplation  of  the  years  of  wrong, 

Shake  the  last  tears  away, 

And  through  thy  glistening  lashes, 

See  how  the  bright  dawn  flashes 

On  the  dark  frontiers  of  another  day. 

He  who  was  born  a  hundred  years  ago 
Greets  thee  from  out  his  silence. 
He  had  his  share  in  that  great  answer 
Of  the  million-throated,  No ! 
To  the  base  plot  for  Freedom's  overthrow; 
All  lovers  of  divinest  Liberty 
Were  present  in  that  Concord; 
And  Lowell's  voice,  free, 
With  the  freedom  of  two  nations, 
Vibrated  in  that  trumpet  tone: 
How  could  that  soul  be  alien  and  alone 
Who  nourished  Freedom  in  her  direst  need? 
Watcher  of  the  world's  turbid  tide, 
He  found  our  faults;  Truth  was  his  only  pride, 
But  Truth  had  taken  Humour  by  the  hand 
For  counsel,  that  she  might  better  understand. 
His  mind  was  cheered  and  lit 
By  the  still  silver  lamps  of  elder  days; 
He  pierced  the  gloom  of  many  a  clinging  haze 
With  arrows  of  burning  wit; 
He  knew  that  Thought  is  master  of  Deed, 
[83] 


[84] 

He  dwelt  in  mansions  with  the  Lords  of  Thought, 
And  by  their  wisdom  we  are  freed. 

Thought  flies  before  the  venture, 

Prompting  with  lonely  impulse 

As  it  moves  and  breathes; 

When  the  deed  is  fact, 

And  Victor-laughter  crowns  the  act, 

Thought  heaps  the  ringing  portal 

With  the  roses  and  the  wreaths; 

When  they  are  old 

Thought  summons  a  few  words, 

Clear  with  light  and  the  songs  of  birds, 

Graves  them  on  gold — 

The  deed  is  made  immortal  I 

Come,  let  us  dream  the  dream 

That  Milton  and  Shelley, 

That  Lowell  and  Whitman  dreamed, 

Prompting  the  Future  with  our  thought; 

Then,  when  the  deed  is  wrought, 

The  thinkers  who  come  after 

Will  join  their  thought  with  ours 

And  crown  the  event, — 

Liberty  justified  of  her  roots  and  flowers: 

Then  we,  with  silence  blent, 

Shall  feel  the  Victor-laughter 

Thrill  all  our  silence,  and  shall  be  well  content. 


MEMBERS  OF  THE  AMERICAN  ACADEMY 
OF  ARTS  AND  LETTERS 


MEMBERS  OF  THE  AMERICAN  ACADEMY 
OF  ARTS  AND  LETTERS 

The  Academy  was  organized  in  1904-5  by  the  National 
Institute  of  Arts  and  Letters.  It  comprises  fifty  members, 
who  as  vacancies  occur  are  elected  from  the  Institute's  list 
of  two  hundred  and  fifty. 

OFFICERS 

President :  Mr.  Howells  Chancellor  :  Mr.  Sloane 

Treasurer  :  Mr.  Hastings 

Permanent  Secretary  :  Mr.  Johnson,  347  Madison  Ave.,  N.  Y. 
Directors  :    Messrs.  Butler,  French,  Hastings,  Howells,  Johnson,  Sloane 


and  Thomas 


William  Dean  Howells 
*Augustus  Saint-Gaudens 
*Edmund  Clarence  Stedman 
*John  La  Farge 
*SamueI  Langhorne  Clemens 
*John  Hay 
*Edward  MacDowell 
*Henry  James 
*CharIes  FoIIen  McKim 
*Henry  Adams 
*CharIes  Eliot  Norton 
*John  Quincy  Adams  Ward 
*Thomas  Raynesford  Lounsbury 
*Theodore  Roosevelt 
"Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich 
*Joseph  Jefferson 

John  Singer  Sargent 
*Richard  Watson  Gilder 
*Horace  Howard  Furness 


*Henry  Charles  Lea 
Edwin  Howland  Blashfield 

*WiIIiam  Merritt  Chase 
Thomas  Hastings 

""Hamilton  Wright  Mabie 

*Bronson  Howard 
Brander  Matthews 
Thomas  Nelson  Page 
Elihu  Vedder 
George  Edward  Woodberry 

*WiIIiam  Vaughn  Moody 

*Kenyon  Cox 

George  Whitefield  Chadwick 
Abbott  Handerson  Thayer 

*John  Muir 

*CharIes  Francis  Adams 
Henry  Mills  Alden 
George  deForest  Brush 
William  Rutherford  Mead 


Deceased 


87] 


[88  ] 


*John  Bigelow 

*WinsIow  Homer 

*CarI  Schurz 

*  Alfred  Thayer  Mahan 

*JoeI  Chandler  Harris 
Daniel  Chester  French 
John  Burroughs 
James  Ford  Rhodes 

*Edwin  Austin  Abbey 
Horatio  William  Parker 
William  Milligan  Sloane 

*Edward  Everett  Hale 
Robert  Underwood  Johnson 
George  Washington  Cable 

*DanieI  Coit  Gilman 

"Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson 

*DonaId  Grant  Mitchell 

*Andrew  Dickson  White 
Henry  van  Dyke 
William  Crary  Brownell 
Basil  Lanneau  Gildersleeve 

*JuIia  Ward  Howe 
Woodrow  Wilson 
Arthur  Twining  Hadley 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge 

*Francis  Hopkinson  Smith 

*Francis  Marion  Crawford 

[Revised  to  May  15,  1919] 


*John  White  Alexander 

Bliss  Perry 
*Francis  Davis  Millet 

Abbott  Lawrence  Lowell 
*James  Whitcomb  Riley 

Nicholas  Murray  Butler 

Paul  Wayland  Bartlett 
*George  Browne  Post 

Owen  Wister 

Herbert  Adams 

Augustus  Thomas 

Timothy  Cole 

Cass  Gilbert 

William  Roscoe  Thayer 

Robert  Grant 

Frederick  MacMonnies 

Julian  Alden  Weir 

William  Gillette 

Paul  Elmer  More 
*George  Lockhart  Rives 

Barrett  Wendell 

Gari  Melchers 

Elihu  Root 

Brand  Whitlock 

Hamlin  Garland 

Paul  Shorey 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


LIBRARY  USE 

DEC  -  1  1955 

OEC1     1955  Lo 


23Apr'5 


REC'O 

APR  12 


LD2 


)476 


